Madison Square Garden, New York City - For the vacant IBF, IBO middleweight titles, Gennadiy Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KOs) was tested tough and some felt he was on his way to a loss, but he pulled out a close twelve round unanimous decision over Sergiy Derevyanchenko (13-2, 10 KOs). The scores were 114-113, 115-112, 115-112.

Golovkin is coming off a four round blowout of Steve Rolls in June.

Derevyancheko has been out of the ring since winning an IBF eliminator with a twelve round unanimous decision back in April.

Derevyanchenko, who went down in the first and suffered a bad cut in the second, made it a fire fight as the contest played out for the remainder of the contest, and landed a lot of heavy punches on Golovkin.