It’s kind of a forgone conclusion that WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (27-0, 24 KO’s) will be dominating his over-matched and undersized opponent Curtis Stevens (25-3, 18 KO’s) in their HBO televised fight at Madison Square Garden Theater, in New York, New York, USA. It’s not so much what happens in this fight for Golovin, because he’s going to win by either a knockout or a lopsided decision.
The real question is where does Golovkin go after he beats Stevens. The problem is none of the top middleweights wants to fight him, so Golovkin is wasting his time trying to get the 160 lb. champions Darren Barker, Sergio Martinez and Peter Quillin to fight him because it’s not going to happen. For Golovkin to get a big fight, he’s going to need to move down in weight to 154 or up in weight to 168 and even then it’ll be a subjective thing whether you consider his opponent a big name or not.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 told Steve Kim of Maxboxing.com “[Gennady’s] willing to go up or down if there’s a compelling fight…There’s a lot of big names at 154 and a lot of big names at 168 and if the right scenerio comes up, then that’s something that Gennady and Abel [Sanchez] have made clear, that they would go to either division.”
There are some big names at 154 with Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, but the chances of either of those guys saying yes to a fight against Golovkin are virtually nonexistent. Canelo has never seemed eager to want to fight Golovkin and it’s not likely that he’s going to all of a sudden start showing interest now that he’s been soundly beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr. Cotto is interested in Canelo or Sergio Martinez, so he’s not going to likely agree to someone better than those guys with Golovkin.
Golovkin can always fight the winner of the Erislandy Lara vs. Austin Trout fight, but I wouldn’t consider it a big fight because neither of those guys are big names. At super middleweight, IBF/WBA 168 lb. champion Carl Froch and his promoter have expressed interest in facing Golovkin. But they want Golovkin to come to the UK to fight, and that’s probably not a good situation for HBO. Additionally, Froch has a fight this month against George Groves and he may not win that fight, and that would remove Froch from the equation. Groves could fight Andre Ward at super middleweight, but that would be a tough match-up for Golovkin due to Ward’s mugging style of fighting. Golovkin would have a better chance than anyone else due to his excellent inside fighting skills, but it would still be a tough fight for him because Ward is good at using his weight and size to overpower smaller fighters.