By Steve Kim

On Tuesday afternoon at the Wild Card West Boxing Club in Santa Monica, California, unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) spoke optimistically with the gathered media about how his 2017 will be much more productive and fruitful than last year.

He kicks off this year by facing Daniel Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) on March 18 at Madison Square Garden in New York City on a card that will be distributed by HBO Pay-Per-View.

The managing director of K2 Promotions, Tom Loeffler, happens to agree that his client could be on his way to a huge campaign.

"Absolutely, if he's successful March 18th - I think it opens up a lot of doors for Gennady. I think it's finally to the point now where the big names that have always been avoiding him are at the point where they're willing to get in the ring with him because they know, look, the fight with Gennady and 'Canelo' (Saul Alvarez) is the biggest in the sport of boxing. That's what the fans are demanding, that's what the media is demanding. So if they're both successful it's a huge fight," said Loeffler to BoxingScene.com.

But of course Golovkin has to come out victorious in his upcoming assignment and Canelo must take care of business on May 6th versus Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. This proposed fight would presumably take place in September. There has also been speculation that Golovkin could fully unify the middleweight division against WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders on a date in June in his home country of Kazakhstan.

"If Saunders is ready to now unify that's a great fight as well. That's been Gennady's dream the whole time - to unify the middleweight division, to say he's truly the best one in the division. There's no other champions out there saying that they hold a belt," said Loeffler. "I really think it opens up a lot of doors. If Chavez somehow upsets 'Canelo' then that's a huge fight. That's a fight we tried to make in the past as well."
 
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.