WHEN Serik Sapiyev speaks, you have to listen. He is one of Kazakhstanโs finest boxers. He won everything going, including the 2012 Olympic Games where he received the Val Barker trophy for best boxer of the tournament. Then he quit the sport. Speaking to Boxing News at the Barys Arena in Astana at the Womenโs World championships, Sapiyev reflected on Gennady Golovkin, Canelo Alvarez and the path he chose.
โBecause I reached my dream. My coaches, my close friends, relatives advised me to finish. I finished at the top. I think itโs the best point to stop your career,โ he said.
His countryman, Gennady Golovkin was a decorated amateur and turned professional where, now the holder of three major titles, he has enjoyed great success. But Sapiyev did not choose that path. โA few promotions, managers invited me to the professionals, I decided I reached all tournaments, all titles in the amateurs and I decided I wouldnโt try professional boxing. Maybe in my soul I wanted to go but decided to finish, to take care of my health, to work as a manager, an employer, not as a boxer,โ Serik explained. โThey need to manage themselves in America and in Kazakhstan our federation manages boxers, manages coaches, gives them facilities for training. They donโt worry about training, about trips, tournaments, itโs the federation. As a professional you do it yourself. This [staying in the Olympic sport] is our preference.โ
On Golovkin he reflects, โHeโs very strong. Heโs not American, first, he doesnโt make big money like American boxers. Heโs very strong but doesnโt make [big] moneyโฆ And all of Golovkinโs opponents wonโt fight. Like maybe regarding [Canelo] Alvarez, he wants to fight, but managers now [tell him] itโs very difficult, dangerous to fight with Golovkin and Alvarezโs team, if they fight and Alvarez lost, they will earn not much money right now. Alvarez I think did the right step. Alvarez was right: โI will fight, but not todayโ. Then after three, four, five [years], like Pacquiao-Mayweather, Golovkin will be older, Alvarez becoming better and better, maybe there will be the fight after three years, two years when Alvarez team will see Golovkinโs condition [has decreased].โ
Thatโs not to say Sapiyev found it easy to hang up his gloves. โFirst two years I very much missed boxing. After the Olympic Games, in 2013, were the World championships in Almaty,โ he recalled. โI missed it, it was bad. After the championships I went to London to study.โ
He attend Brunel university, where he studied sports management. He went back to the city where heโd enjoyed his defining moment in boxing but refreshed himself, with new friends and a different kind of life. โI always like to go to London,โ he says, โbecause part of my soul is in London.โ
For more from Serik Sapiyev donโt miss this weekโs issue of Boxing News magazine