Abel Sanchez has helped Gennady Golovkin emerge as one of the toughest boxers to hit in the sport. (Courtesy of Abel Sanchez)

All these years later, after training 14 men to world championships, including one to the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Abel Sanchez still remains relatively anonymous.

WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin's coach proved many years ago – long before Golovkin made the windy trek nearly 7,000 feet up the San Bernardino Mountains to The Summit Gym in Big Bear Lake, Calif. – that he is one of the sport's best.

What Sanchez is in the process of doing with Golovkin, who meets Marco Antonio Rubio Saturday in the main event of an HBO-televised card at the sold-out StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., is the kind of transformation that Freddie Roach did with Manny Pacquiao earlier this century.

By the time Pacquiao wandered into Roach's humble Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif., in 2001, Roach was already one of boxing's best trainers. He'd worked with the late Johnny Tapia and future Hall of Famer Virgil Hill, and had learned from Eddie Futch, the greatest boxing coach of them all.

Roach, though, managed to cultivate Pacquiao's exceptional talent and that turned the Filipino into a global sports icon.

Golovkin had great physical gifts when he first met Sanchez three years ago. He was 18-0 when he met Sanchez in June 2010, but he was a vastly different boxer.

He's beloved by American fans for his aggressive, hard-punching style. Golovkin is constantly on the prowl and has one of the sport's highest knockout ratios.

But when he got to Sanchez, he didn't fight that way. He was more erect and vastly more economical with his punches. He fought behind a jab and wasn't looking to necessarily mix it up.

"Gennady has a completely different style than when he first came to me," Sanchez said. "We've been able to modify it and convert it into a fan-friendly style. If I'd have kept him how he was – the best way to describe it is that he came over here boxing like a Klitschko – we wouldn't be talking now.

"I was able to make a dramatic change, but I had to have a fighter who was willing to make that change with me. All of my guys fight similar styles, but they're similar because we feel, well, I feel, they need to entertain."

Fight fans should exult whenever they see Sanchez in a boxer's corner because rare is the Sanchez fighter who doesn't put on a good show.

Sanchez, though, hasn't become the celebrity that Roach has become despite his success. Roach frequently welcomes big-name actors, musicians and other athletes to his gym and his name has become synonymous with boxing.

View photos Gennady Golovkin punches Daniel Geale during a middleweight championship bout in July (Getty Images) More

Roach, who has won the Trainer of the Year award from the Boxing Writers Association of America six times, became so popular that filmmaker Peter Berg sold a six-part reality series on him to HBO.

Sanchez hasn't gotten that kind of acclaim yet, even though Terry Norris made it to the International Boxing Hall of Fame under his tutelage and the likes of Paul Vaden, Miguel Angel Gonzalez and Lupe Aquino won world championships with him.

This could be the year that, for the first time, Sanchez wins the Trainer of the Year award.

Sanchez, who owns a construction company, built The Summit in 2000. It is a 4,000-square-foot gym with a pair of homes on the property.

He's not a horses-for-courses type of trainer. He has a system that he is fully committed to using. It's been proven to work over time and, because he knows he'll be the fall guy if things go wrong, he demands his boxers use it or he won't take them on.

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