By Shaun Brown
With the Gennady Golovkin express nearing full steam ahead the question is who will step up and fight the destructive Kazakh now?
On Sat night at Madison Square Garden win number 30 for the WBA world middleweight champion came after his disposing of former IBF/WBA title holder, Daniel Geale inside three rounds. With HBO fully behind their ever growing superstar the network plucked out a recent Carl Froch quote during their broadcast which, on paper, reads as though the WBA/IBF super middleweight champion doesn’t want any part of GGG should he step up in weight.
During the build-up to Carl Froch-George Groves 2, both fighters took to Facebook along with Sky Sports presenter Adam Smith to participate in a fans Q&A with one of the questions being:
“Would either of you be willing to face Gennady Golovkin and what would be your strategy?”
“Just swerve Golovkin like the plague. Punches like a mule. Don’t need to be in with him, dangerous fight,” responded Froch.
Froch’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, wasn’t surprised that HBO used the quotes.
“They’re trying to hype up Golovkin as much as they can and by having a quote from Froch who will really fight anyone saying that, its good marketing,” he said.
Do HBO really think someone with the record of Froch would swerve Golovkin? Probably not but the building of a potential mouth-watering epic has to begin somewhere. And Hearn is fully behind the fight if the money is correct.
“I made some comments on Twitter yesterday (Sunday) when I said that the bottom line is that the fight is not pay-per-view yet on HBO. And for a fight of that magnitude to happen you’d need PPV from HBO. You make the fights because the fans want to see it, the broadcasters want to see it and because the money’s right. And at the moment the money’s not there. And when I say it’s not there it doesn’t mean there isn’t any money in the fight it’s just not the kind of money you need to make it.
“If the right offer came in to fight Golovkin he would definitely accept because that’s what he’s like. He wants the big fights. The only person that can beat Golovkin is someone with an iron chin and that’s Froch. At 168 I think it’s a 50-50 fight, I really do.”
Hearn told ‘Scene that Team Froch have given themselves a deadline of ten days to two weeks to ‘make their move’ as to who ‘The Cobra’ will fight next. The picture features the same usual suspects as before.
“It’s still the same three in the mix. Talks have re-emerged with Chavez Jr. over the last week. Obviously the DeGale fight is a big fight domestically and a third fight with Kessler still appeals. DeGale needs to know what’s going on well because he needs to fight.”
Scene’ asked the Matchroom promoter if Froch would vacate one of his world titles for DeGale to contest should that fight not happen.
“Possibly. That’s another conversation to have with him. He doesn’t like vacating belts. But Froch has got, as you know, ambitions to fight in Vegas and that tends to be the one that makes the fire burn inside him and I think he needs that moving forward in his career.”
Shaun Brown is the UK Editor at Boxing Scene and a contributor to Boxing Monthly. He can be contacted at sbrownboxing@gmail.com with any news, views or stories you may have.
