Despite the glittering career he went on to have, Gennady Golovkin's first sporting love was not actually boxing. Before he ever stepped foot in a boxing gym, 'GGG' was obsessed with playing football. "When I wasn’t at home, I’d be outside playing soccer. Soccer was my favourite thing to do," Golovkin once told @decwarrington for Boxing News. "I was always playing soccer. I went to this sports camp where all day we would play soccer. Except one day, our coach said, ‘Okay, maybe today we try boxing’. "I was just a tiny kid. I never boxed in a ring like that before. I had gloves at home; almost every kid did. Boxing is a popular sport in Kazakhstan, so boys would always mess around. "I think boys everywhere always are fighting like that. I wanted to play soccer, though. I loved soccer. But Sergey and Vadim [Golovkin’s brothers], they told me I needed to try different things to be active. It’d be good for my body to learn different sports, they said. "And they knew boxing and thought it would be good for me, too. I wasn’t going to say no to them. I just nodded. So they told me they were going to take me to the boxing club the next day."