Although Gennadiy Golovkin was the big winner on the June 8 Madison Square Garden card, a number of prospects scored big wins on the undercard.
On the undercard of the DAZN event headlined by Golovkin's DAZN debut and fourth-round win over Steve Rolls, highly-touted prospect Israil Madrimov won his third pro bout with a sixth-round TKO win over Norberto Gonzalez.
Early in the sixth round, Madrimov caught Gonzalez with a big hook that sent him to the ropes, which opened the way for Madrimov to throw a flurry of uninterrupted hook and power shots that forced the referee to step in and stop the fight. Madrimov may have only had three pro bouts but is already well on his way to becoming a world title contender. Madrimov won the WBA Intercontinental junior middleweight title in his second fight and came into this fight ranked No. 8 by the WBA.
Also on the undercard, Charles Conwell scored arguably the biggest wins of his young career by defeating Courtney Pennington by unanimous decision to win the USBA junior middleweight title. The 21-year-old Conwell, whose record improved to 10-0, won with scores of 97-92, 97-92 and 96-93.
As for a knockout that looked almost as impressive as Golovkin's knockout over Rolls, Nikita Ababiy landed a vicious left body shot against Juan Francisco Lopez Barajas in the first minute of their fight to knock him out. The remainder of the card saw Brian Ceballo win an eight-round slugfest against Bakhtiyar Eyubov by unanimous decision (80-72, 79-73, 78-74).
Lastly, Ali Akhmedov threw a flurry of punches to Marcus McDaniel midway through the third round to drop him. McDaniel managed to get back up, but the referee believed that he was still not fit to continue fight and so the bout was stopped.
