By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Daniel Jacobs is far more likely to face another opponent next, but the WBA middleweight champion contends he isn’t avoiding Gennady Golovkin.

Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) has an exclusive contract with HBO Sports, a network with which Jacobs’ powerful adviser, Al Haymon, doesn’t negotiate deals these days. But if that issue can be resolved and the money’s right, Jacobs says he would challenge Golovkin for middleweight supremacy.

Whatever occurs, there’s much more demand for a Golovkin-Jacobs fight now that Brooklyn’s Jacobs (31-1, 28 KOs) scored a sensational first-round technical knockout victory over Peter Quillin (32-1-1, 23 KOs) on Saturday night at Barclays Center. Showtime televised the Jacobs-Quillin fight and promoter Lou DiBella said it’s reasonable to expect Showtime will televise Jacobs’ next title defense.

Boxing politics aside, Jacobs believes he is more prepared to challenge Golovkin than he was a year ago.

“I don’t come into this sport to duck and dodge no one,” Jacobs said. “[Golovkin is] not someone who I fear. He’s not someone I look at as me wanting to avoid. Obviously, when you’re dealing with a sport like this you wanna make sure you have the finances where it needs to be, in order for it to be such a big fight. And that’s all I’m worried about.

“I’m just making sure that I get in there and get compensated correctly. Not that I’m saying, ‘Let’s wait 10 fights so I can get this under my belt or that under my belt.’ No, I just wanna make sure that it’s right for me. And I have one of the best advisers in the game [Al Haymon]. And he always advises us to make sure that we have all the rewards for the risks that we’re going inside the ring for.”

Kazakhstan’s Golovkin is the WBA “super” middleweight champion and also owns the IBF and WBC interim middleweight championships. Jacobs won the then-vacant WBA “regular” middleweight title by stopping Australia’s Jarrod Fletcher (18-3, 10 KOs) in the fifth round of their August 2014 fight at Barclays Center.

Jacobs might be forced to make a mandatory defense against Venezuela’s Alfonso Blanco (12-0, 5 KOs), the WBA’s interim middleweight champion, in his next fight. A fight against the winner of a Dec. 19 bout in Manchester, England, between WBO middleweight champ Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) and mandatory challenger Billy Joe Saunders (22-0, 12 KOs) is a possibility for Jacobs’ next appearance as well.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.