By Steve Kim
In the immediate aftermath of Ryota Murata's eight-round stoppage of Emanuele Blandaruma, Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum - who co-promotes the Japanese star alongside Teiken Promotions - was very clear that he'd like to see a match-up between Murata and the unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs).
Arum told BoxingScene.com - "We're all on board with it - including the fighter. I haven't discussed it with Tom (Loeffer, the head of GGG Promotions), obviously Tom is waiting to see what the (Nevada) commission does on Wednesday.
"I think Tom's priority is still to do the Canelo (Saul Alvarez) fight and if that fight doesn't happen then you know I'll be talking to him."
On Wednesday, Alvarez will find out how long he will be suspended for by the Nevada State Athletic Commission after testing positive for clenbuterol back in February.
The drug testing snafu scuttled the highly anticipated rematch between Golovkin and the Mexican star - which was scheduled for May 5th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
''When I said December, it could be January or February as well, it doesn't matter," said Arum, who has plans to bring Murata to the States for a fight in the summer months.
Murata (14-1, 11 KO's), who is the WBA 'regular' middleweight titlist, has become a full-blown star in his country.
"You've got to understand, nobody has ever seen anything like this in Japan for a Japanese fighter. I mean, he's getting ratings that are not to be believed, that are bigger than baseball. He did 15 million people who watched the fight live on a Sunday night and it peaked at 17 million. That's a country that has barely a hundred million people. That's something incredible, like Super Bowl kind of numbers," Arum said.
As for how well a Golovkin-Murata event would do at the box-office at the Tokyo Dome (famous for hosting Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson in 1990), Arum stated - "I think it holds around 60,000 and it'll be sold-out."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
