By Steve Kim
With Gennady Golovkin no longer being the IBF middleweight belt-holder, there will be two contender who will soon be fighting for this title. The organization stated that the two leading available contenders will square off for that vacant championship.
As you look at their rankings, you see that Sergey Derevyanchenko (who is rated number one) and Danny Jacobs (rated third) are both in the top five.
The sanctioning body announced on Wednesday that Golovkin was stripped of the IBF title, because he failed to reach agreement to obligate himself to make a mandatory defense against Derevyanchenko (12-0, 10 KOs).
If the WBA orders a fight between Jacobs and Derevyanchenko - there happens to be a twist because they both happen to be trained by Andre Rozier.
And with that, for the time being this particular match-up is a non-starter in the views of Rozier.
"There's other directions to go in. If there was only one direction it might be a different story - but there's so many directions to go in and they're teammates - they don't need to box each other at this point in time," Rozier explained.
"If you've seen in the past when guys were working with Freddie Roach, 'I won't box this guy,' so and so forth. It's the same premise. There's a lot of work out there and so many directions to go in, it's not necessary," Rozier added.
As it relates to Jacobs, Rozier doesn't seem to put much stock in any conversations that have him possibly facing Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez in September, but he stated - "I'd really like to see Danny and Billy Joe Saunders (the WBO middleweight titlist) tie it up. If Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren can work it out that would be a huge, huge fight."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
