By Cliff Rold

Boxing’s richest glamour classes have often been heavyweight, middleweight, and welterweight. Business is picking up at heavyweight and steady at welterweight.

Then there is middleweight. 

In the age of social media, it’s almost an oxymoron to say the following:

Let’s not overreact.

Friday’s announcement that unified (WBA/WBC/IBF/IBO) middleweight titlist Gennady Golovkin will face IBF welterweight titlist Kell Brook was met about how one would expect. It had its defenders, it had its detractors, and it had its snark attacks.

It’s not a fight that was anticipated in this corner and not one found particularly interesting now that it’s here. The best compliment possible is that it’s a better fight on paper than lineal middleweight champion Saul Alvarez defending against Amir Khan.

Alvarez-Khan was a cynical farce from jump. While the courage of Khan could be commended, doing so always came off as feeding a delusion. A former Jr. welterweight titlist whose chin had been carefully maneuvered at147 never had any chance of winning.

Brook may have a small one.

It’s very small.

That said, a welterweight fighting a middleweight isn’t some shocking turn of events. It wasn’t shocking in Alvarez-Khan. That fight wasn’t a mismatch because of the size. It was a combination of factors that included size but was far more predicated on Khan’s flaws. Until he got caught, Khan comported himself well.

He was just always going to get caught.

The two divisions, before and after the birth of Jr. middleweight, have intermingled almost as long as they’ve existed. Almost all the top middleweights faced welterweights in their careers, for titles and not. Brook is rated by many as the leading welterweight in the world right now.

Someone in that position challenging the man viewed as the leading middleweight isn’t historically unusual.

That doesn’t make Golovkin-Brook enticing. Brook is a good fighter but also one with a limited set of tests in his own division. He has a really good win over Shawn Porter. In terms of the upper echelon of his class, that’s about it. He might be more live here than we know, but what we know about him above the level of foes like Vyacheslav Senchenko or Jo Jo Dan is, well…

Shawn Porter.

This isn’t Emile Griffith rising to challenge Dick Tiger. It’s not even Jose Napoles fatefully electing to try Carlos Monzon or Marlon Starling-Michael Nunn.

On paper, it’s a dice roll for a guy who might be the goods but who hasn’t faced anyone since Porter to test the proposition.

It’s also a sign of what a complete mess middleweight is right now.

The top three figures at middleweight right now are Golovkin, Daniel Jacobs, and Alvarez. Throw in WBO titlist Billy Joe Saunders to round out the picture.

Saunders has yet to fight or sign to fight in 2016. Golovkin (against mis-mandatory Dominic Wade) and Alvarez have both competed once already with their next fights signed. Golovkin’s next has been discussed. Alvarez will be moving back to Jr. middleweight, for at least a fight, to challenge WBO titlist Liam Smith. Jacobs will be fighting a rematch with Sergio Mora later this month.

That’s five fights signed so far in 2016.

That’s zero fights between those fighters and foes rated universally among the likes of ESPN, Ring, or TBRB as top ten middleweights.

This isn’t just a division where the best aren’t fighting the best in 2016.

It’s a division where they aren’t really fighting the rest either.

Contrast that with most of the rest of the scale this year. There are solid top ten clashes already completed, coming, or likely coming, all over the place:

Heavyweight (Fury-Klitschko II), cruiserweight (Glowacki-Usyk), light heavyweight (Ward-Kovalev), super middleweight (DeGale-Jack), welterweight (Thurman-Porter), Jr. welterweight (Postol-Crawford), lightweight (Linares-Crolla), Jr. lightweight (Salido-Vargas), Jr. featherweight (Frampton-Quigg), bantamweight (Warren-Payano II and Yamanaka-Moreno II), Jr. bantamweight (Kono-Concepcion), flyweight (Gonzalez-Arroyo), and strawweight (Freshmart-Kono).

There are also fights or likely fights where rated men are moving up a single division that are not seen as the mismatches middleweight is presenting:

Jr. lightweight (Martinez-Lomachenko), featherweight (Santa Cruz-Frampton), Jr. bantamweight (Gonzalez-Cuadras).

What’s happening at middleweight is just ridiculous. It’s a division where so much of what’s wrong with boxing in its current form is laid bare. Boxing is a chaos engine fueled by different geographic markets, a variety of international networks, and promoters with different goals. In the fights getting made, there is some alignment in those things.

At middleweight there isn’t and what we’re getting this year are fights between top middleweights and people who aren’t.

And a maybe on September 2017.

Golovkin at least seems willing. His willingness keeps hitting certain glass ceilings, in part because his willingness seems confined to a class low on depth or quality and high on guys who can make a living easier without him. How much longer he is willing to be Charlie Brown to Alvarez’s Lucy remains to be seen. After signing for Brook, it’s fair to ask if it’s time to return to the idea of him moving up in weight.

After all, if Brook can jump two classes with no catchweight, can’t Golovkin entertain doing the same for the winner of Kovalev-Ward? Tiger moved up immediately after losing to the then-welterweight champion Griffith to defeat Jose Torres for light heavyweight honors. Golovkin isn’t facing Griffith in September. He’d likely be coming up off a win.

It has to be more compelling than this.

These are not glamorous times at middleweight.

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene and a member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board and the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com