Team Golovkin Open To Martinez, Pirog, Quillin, Geale

By Keith Idec

Gennady Golovkin will attend the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.-Sergio Martinez fight Saturday night in Las Vegas.

It’s no secret the unbeaten Golovkin wants to fight the winner in what would be a very intriguing middleweight championship unification fight, no matter who wins. Daniel Geale also will sit ringside for the Chavez-Martinez match at MGM Grand.

Geale wants the Chavez-Martinez winner as well. If neither fighter can land a higher-profile fight against Chavez (46-0-1, 32 KOs) or Martinez (49-2-2, 28 KOs), the WBA has ordered Australia’s Geale (28-1, 15 KOs) — who owns the IBF middleweight title, too — to box Golovkin (24-0, 21 KOs) by the end of the year to determine the identity of the real WBA 160-pound champion (Geale won its ‘super’ championship from Felix Sturm on Sept. 1 in Obershausen, Germany; Golovkin is its ‘regular’ title-holder).

If that doesn’t work out, either, Golovkin has another attractive option. Representatives for the Kazakhstan native are open to rescheduling a fight against Russia’s Dmitriy Pirog (20-0, 15 KOs).

Pirog, the WBO middleweight champion, reportedly ruptured a disc during training in early July. That back injury forced Russia’s Pirog to withdraw from a scheduled unification fight against the heavy-handed Golovkin, who stopped Pirog’s replacement, Polish southpaw Grzegorz Proksa (28-2, 21 KOs), in the fifth round Sept. 1 in Verona, N.Y.

“My understanding is [Pirog] has recovered from the injury,” said Tom Loeffler, managing director of the Klitschko brothers’ K2 Promotions, which represents Golovkin. “That certainly would be somebody we’d consider for Gennady in the future. … Pirog, having fought on HBO before, beating Danny Jacobs, he’d definitely be somebody we’d consider.

“The great thing about the middleweight division is it’s so deep. Whether it’s Peter Quillin, [Geale]. Certainly, Martinez would be the optimum fight. But I think there are so many fights that are out there, that it won’t be hard to match Gennady up in a great fight.”

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.