By Victor Salazar

New York, NY - The job of keeping Gennady Golovkin focused falls in line with the 2015 BWAA trainer of the year, Abel Sanchez. Sanchez has guided Golovkin from an unknown commodity from Kazakhstan training in Big Bear to one of boxing’s biggest stars.

In order to be more of a crossover star, Golovkin (34-0, 31KOs) needs a mainstream opponent - such as the man he is chasing for the WBC middleweight title, Saul  'Canelo' Alvarez (46-1-1, 32KOs). 

Golovkin's enter team has maintained that 'goal number one' is to capture all of the belts at 160, and Sanchez feels that is something that has kept the consensus best middleweight in the world focused.

Golovkin returns on April 23rd at the Forum in Los Angeles, where he will defend his IBO/WBA/IBF titles against Dominic Wade.

Beyond Wade, Golovkin is the mandatory challenger Canelo and looks to get him in the ring in the fall. The overall focus is not Canelo, says Sanchez. The overall focus is to capture the WBC belt from whoever is the titleholder. If Canelo is beaten by Amir Khan on May 7th, then Khan will become the target.

“I think all this talk of Canelo is a little over blown,” Sanchez told BoxingScene.com. Gennady made it clear, hiss focus was all the belts. It wasn’t Canelo so that’s why he’s focused. The reason we’re fighting Dominic Wade is because he wants to keep the belt and be the undisputed champion. As we seen with Fury being stripped after fight Klitschko, that IBF will strip him if otherwise if he doesn’t fight his mandatory. We worked too hard to get the belts.”

Another factor that Sanchez is keeping a close eye on, is Golovkin surpassing Bernard Hopkins' record of successful middleweight title defenses. Hopkins holds the record at 20. Golovkin is currently at 15 and he will be at 16 if he defeats Wade in April.

Aside from the belts, the history aspect keeps the middleweight focused.

“There’s a lot of sub plots that keep us motivated,” explained the trainer of the year. “We like his place in history if he passes Bernard Hopkins for most consecutive title defenses at 160. If he continues his KO streak and keep the highest knockout percentage in middleweight history, that’s motivation. If he break Bernard’s records, it means I’m a part of history. Nobody knew a kid from Kazakhstan that nobody ever heard of before that could sell out on both coasts.”

And fighting and defeating a legend like Hopkins is also motivation. Sanchez says nudging Golovkin's promoter, Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions, to get them a fight with Hopkins - if they are unable to get the Canelo-Khan winner or a unification with WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders.

“I mentioned [this fight] to Tom Loeffler for the last 8 months. Bernard Hopkins represents a step that a lot of champions would love to have on their ledger,” Sanchez said.