by David P. Greisman

It was a good crowd for Gennady Golovkin’s first foray into the big room at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. But with the middleweight titleholder likely to return in October or November, and with basketball’s New York Knicks and hockey’s New York Rangers calling that arena home, boxing’s Mecca may be quite busy with other sports this fall.

“If it can’t be in the big arena, we would find a different location. We really want to branch out,” said Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions, which promotes Golovkin. “I mean, he trains in [Los Angeles], and he gets mobbed by fans when he goes to the fights there in L.A. And also Vegas is a market that’s very interested in hosting Gennady. So we want to develop him in all the different cities, but New York is clearly the media capital, which is part of the reason why he’s been so successful.”

Potential fights in the StubHub Center in Carson, California, or The Forum in Inglewood, California, would depend on the opponent, Loeffler said.

“With the right type of opponent, I think the StubHub Center would be a terrific venue. The Forum would be a terrific venue,” he said. “The Chavez fight, even when it was rumored to be out there, we got a tremendous response, and I think that would’ve sold out The Forum.

“There’s a lot of Russian-speaking residents. When we did the Klitschko fights — when Vitali fought at Staples Center when he fought Lennox Lewis and when he fought Corrie Sanders and when he fought Chris Arreola — we had a big turnout in the Staples Center. We feel that Gennady would be a great star in L.A. We just need the right opponent to make it make sense.”

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