Golovkin: I Want Billy Joe Saunders Next, I'll Come Back To UK

The world's top-ranked middleweight Gennady Golovkin wants another fight in Britain after stopping Kell Brook and is targeting a unification bout with Billy Joe Saunders.

Golovkin defended his IBO, World Boxing Council (WBC) and International Boxing Federation (IBF) titles with a fifth-round stoppage at London's O2 Arena on Saturday.

Golovkin's punishingly accurate blows took their toll on Brook, whose corner threw in the towel. Brook was taken to hospital to be treated for a suspected fractured right eye socket

Brook's Trainer Dominic Ingle said: “When you are fighting someone like Golovkin, he was just taking too many shots.”

Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez praised Ingle for prompting the stoppage. “Dom did the right thing,” Sanchez said.

“As trainer we can’t let 20,000 coaches in the audience dictate to us what to do. We have to be smarter.”

Golovkin, whose World Boxing Association (WBA) belt was not on the line, now wants to fight Brook’s fellow Briton and World Boxing Organisation (WBO) champion Saunders before moving on to Mexican Saul "Canelo" Alvarez in a year's time.

Saunders has the only world middleweight belt not held by WBC-WBA-IBF champion Golovkin, who made Brook his third British victim after Martin Murray and Matt Macklin

“First of all Billy Joe Saunders, and then Canelo,” Golovkin, 34, told a news conference. A fight against Saunders could be made for late this year or early 2017, though a mandatory WBA defence could delay those plans.

“My goal is to hold all the belts in the middleweight division. I would like Billy Joe Saunders first of all because he has the WBO belt.

“I would absolutely come back to the UK to fight. Absolutely I love the UK, I’m a big fan of London.”