BIG BEAR LAKE >> The ring is there, at the Summit Gym, and Gennady Golovkin is inside it.

Millionaire boxers find the most original reasons not to join him. Darnell Boone, 36, goes in every time.

Golovkin is preparing for Kell Brook on Sept. 10 in London. Boone is part of the prep team, a sparring partner, although trainer Abel Sanchez will only have Golovkin go live nine times before the fight.

Middleweight champ Golovkin is unbeaten and so is welterweight champ Brook, with the frame and the moxie to test GGG in unprecedented ways.

Boone has 23 wins and 23 losses, with four draws, and he has given boxing a career’s worth of love that remains unrequited.

The consolation prize is a level of Monday-through-Friday respect in a game that the world only sees on Saturday.

“You get in there with G (Golovkin) and sometimes he gets you and you say, ‘Aw, snap, I ain’t getting caught with that anymore,’’’ Boone said Wednesday, before his team’s no-spar, heavy-sweat workout.

“He’s a good guy. He doesn’t take advantage of you. It’s all work, no egos. And he can take a great shot. Sometimes I gotta let him know I’m in there. I’ll crack him, but he’ll smile and say, ‘Good shot.’ I was with him the last two fights (David Lemeiux, Dominic Wade) and I’m glad they brought me back. When he wins, sure, you feel like you’re a part of it.”

Boone is a natural super-middleweight who had only 10 amateur fights and didn’t turn pro until he was 22, to avoid the street life in Youngstown, Ohio. He had worked in steel mills and in construction with his step-father.

Gradually he became known as a measuring stick that could turn into a bludgeon anytime.

He dealt Adonis Stevenson a second-round TKO in Salisbury, Md. He floored Andre Ward with a left uppercut in Portland, Ore., although Ward won the decision.

In a fitness center in Atlanta six years ago, Boone even knocked down Sergey Kovalev, who will meet Ward Nov. 19 in 2016’s last hope for real boxing history. “I really knocked him down four times but they only gave me credit for one,” Boone said.

Kovalev won a split decision to go to 8-0, and even now Kovalev’s manager Egis Klimas calls it a turning point. For Boone it was another hint that boxing didn’t really want him around, and it was another chance to ignore it.

“They announced it and I thought, wow, they gave it to this guy?” Boone said. “I only got that fight with two weeks to go, which is usually what happens. The rematch with Stevenson (a six-round Stevenson knockout, in his native Montreal), I had to go up to his weight (175), and they changed it at the last minute.

“Once or twice, I’ve thought, what am I really doing this for? I put my hand work on the line and keep getting stifled. But I’ve got a great fiance, and if I quit, I’m telling my (four) kids that when the tough gets going, you quit. I’m not about that.”

A typical assignment for Boone came last May, when he fought 23-year-old Arif Magodemov and was TKOd in a minute and 23 seconds. His last fight was against Schiller Hyppolite, a prospect groomed by the Canadian promoters of Stevenson and Jean Pascal, and he lost a unanimous decision.

Over the years Boone has fought Pascal, Erislandy Lara, Willie Monroe, Edwin Rodriguez and Curtis Stevens. He has done so without a steady trainer, promoter or manager until recently. James Battle, from Dan Birmingham’s successful operation in Tampa, is now training Boone, and Joe Quiambao is his manager.

“Jack Loew was my trainer for a while,” Boone said. “He trained Kelly Pavlik back in Youngstown. I had a good friend, Darren Hill, who trained me, but he got a job driving trucks and he couldn’t put the time in anymore.

“They put me in with the young guys to see if they can break the Darnell Boone code. Most likely they don’t, until the politics comes in. I got 23 losses and I feel like maybe 10 of them were legitimate. But I’ll still get my fights. I just got to keep coming, showing up, showing out. The boxing world puts a label on me but I don’t do it and neither do the fans.”

For now he’s on the mountain, doing long sets of resistance training, running with Golovkin in the morning and trying to beat him,

Then Boone climbs in to face Golovkin. Tough work, but no hesitation. It’s his ring, too.