By Ryan Maquiñana

Middleweight titleholder Gennady Golovkin continues to impress the boxing world one ruthless demolition at a time.

According to Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions, who handles the rising star, the road ahead for the native of Kazakhstan couldn’t be brighter after a fifth-round knockout of top 10 contender Gregorsz Proksa three weeks ago in front of the HBO cameras.

“It was a great debut for him over here on the United States on HBO,” Loeffler told BoxingScene.com.  “He would really love to fight any middleweight or junior middleweight out there.”

Golovkin and Daniel Geale currently hold different versions of the same title and might be on a collision course for the winter, with the former holding the “regular” strap and the latter possessing the “super” title.  

“Right now we have the WBA sanction where he has to fight Daniel Geale by December 31st, so that’s the first order of business, to see if Geale will fight him,” Loeffler said.  “If not, we’ve made it clear to HBO that he’ll fight anyone at 160.”

Golovkin now finds himself in a precarious position.  At the age of 29, the native of Kazakhstan has finally burst on the American fight scene with the punishing triumph over Proksa.  However, it remains to be seen if any of the big rival promoters would dare risk sending their prized 160-pounders into the ring with “GGG.”

“We got such a great response after his fight,” Loeffler added.  “Proksa was a really difficult style.  He was a southpaw.  He had his hands down.  He moved around a lot.

 “Gennady just keeps coming forward.  He puts the pressure on.  He throws a lot of punches and throws hard punches.  I think he’s had 10 straight knockouts in a row now, so people reacted really well to it.  It’s just a matter now of getting bigger names in the ring.”

Following last Saturday’s thrilling finish in Las Vegas between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Sergio Martinez, both Top Rank and Lou DiBella—the fighters’ respective promoters—insinuated that preliminary discussions had already begun for a rematch to take place in Cowboys Stadium early next year.

If Martinez-Chavez II is inevitable, then Golovkin will have to look elsewhere to defend his title.

 “The middleweight division is so deep,” Loeffler said.  “There’s a lot of other names out there like a [Dmitry] Pirog, the guy Gennady was supposed to fight originally.  There are so many other names.

“[Matthew] Macklin had a great fight.  He had a first-round knockout [of Joachim Alcine].  That would be a great fight for Gennady.  It’s really open.  It depends on what Geale does here in the next week.”

Aside from the top dogs at middleweight, there have been talks of Golovkin welcoming a fight with 168-pound champion Andre Ward, who stopped Chad Dawson in spectacular fashion on HBO one week after Golovkin accomplished the feat against Proksa.

“That was tremendous also for the sport of boxing,” Loeffler said of Ward’s performance.  “It really elevated Andre to a different level.  That’s a fight that Gennady would definitely take.

“At this point, it would be a little premature because he still has so many other fights out there at 154 and 160, but I can see that a year, a year and a half down the road, if Andre keeps winning and Gennady keeps winning, that’s a megafight as well.”

Ryan Maquiñana writes a weekly boxing column for CSNBayArea.com.  He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the Ratings Panel for Ring Magazine. E-mail him at rmaquinana@gmail.com, check out his blog at Norcalboxing.net, or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.