By Steve Kim

Originally Golden Boy Promotions had planned on being in Las Vegas this week where the rematch between Saul Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin was scheduled for the T-Mobile Arena on May 5th.

But that event was scrapped a few weeks ago as Alvarez was suspended by the Nevada Athletic Commission for six months for testing positive for clenbuterol.

With that, Golden Boy had to scramble to make fights for their other boxers who were slated to appear on the pay-per-view undercard, such as Ryan Garcia, who is now headlining this Friday night at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

"It was a big blow, I'm not going to lie," said Eric Gomez, the president of Golden Boy Promotions, on the cancellation of the Alvarez-Golovkin rematch.

"But what I told my team is, 'Look, lets do what we do best. Let's work, let's see what we can come up with. Let's do something different.'

"And talking to Oscar we came up with the idea of, 'lets go hard May 4th, lets do something big on May 4th. Lets do a souped up ESPN show where people are going to get excited.' We have Ryan Garcia who people are really excited about. He's been making a name for himself and lets put him to a test. Lets put him in a good fight and see if we can do it at the StubHub and it's been incredible."

Garcia (14-0, 13 KO's) is paired with former world title challenger, Jayson Velez (26-4-1, 18 KO's) in what is considered a legitimate step-up bout. Also on this card is middleweight Spike O'Sullivan (27-2, 19 KO's) who faces Berlin Abreu (14-1, 11 KO's)

According to Gomez,"It's like 90-percent sold-out, which is really, really good and this kid has the potential. The sky's the limit."

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.