When Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) arrived with his trainer and promoter for a new conference in Los Angeles on Thursday, reporters were expecting to learn who GGG would be fighting on May 5. Instead, everyone left the event with more questions than answers.
“There is no announcement,” said promoter Tom Loeffler during the hastily assembled event. “Because there is so much speculation, Gennady wanted to come down here and sit in front of you and give you an update and say he wants to fight on May 5.”
Of course, that much was already clear. The real question is whether a fight will ultimately come off on that date, to which Loeffler could only say that “nothing is finalized.”
MGM Won’t Host May 5 Card
The latest problem is finding a venue for the fight. With less than a month before the planned date, Golovkin and his team have called off plans to fight at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas.
“MGM thought it was too short of time to properly market a big ‘GGG’ event at the Grand Garden,” Loeffler told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a text message.
That doesn’t mean other venues aren’t interested in hosting Golovkin. During the news conference, Loeffler noted the StubHub Center in Los Angeles (which is already hosting an edition of Golden Boy Boxing on ESPN on May 4) and New York City’s Madison Square Garden had also shown interest in hosting the fight.
Who Will Golovkin Fight?
Just as pressing as a venue is finding an opponent for the middleweight champion. On Wednesday, Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan declined to take the fight himself, despite the fact that the Irish boxer had previously said he was eager for the opportunity.
“He really wanted to do the fight, but the short amount of time, the short amount of money, it just doesn’t work at this time,” Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez told ESPN. “If he goes into a big fight like this, the biggest fight of his career, he doesn’t want to go into the fight as the opponent on three weeks’ notice.”
O’Sullivan (27-2, 19 KOs) will instead fight in the May 4 card at the StubHub Center.
Loeffler is instead said to be working to secure Vanes Martirosyan (36-3-1, 21 KOs) as Golovkin’s opponent. That would make sense if the fight does come off in Los Angeles, as Martirosyan is a former Olympian from Glendale, California. But he would also make for a step down in competition for GGG: Martirosyan last fought in May 2016 as a super welterweight, when he lost a unanimous decision to Erislandy Lara.
There’s also the question of whether the IBF would strip GGG of their belt if he fights anyone other than Sergey Derevyanchenko (12-0, 10 KOs), the organization’s mandatory challenger. He would theoretically be next in line to fight Golovkin, though Loeffler is hoping to reach an agreement that will allow that title defense to be delayed until after the May 5 event.
All of these options are being explored because Canelo Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) withdrew from the fight in the face of a suspension after his positive tests for clenbuterol. That caused the fight to be moved from the T-Mobile Arena and to be aired on standard HBO rather than as a pay-per-view event, tightening the budget for both the headlining bout and the rest of the card.
