There appears to be closure in a months’ long effort to consolidate the WBA middleweight title.

BoxingScene.com has confirmed that the twice-ordered Gennadiy Golovkin-Erislandy Lara title fight will now head to a March 13 purse bid hearing. The ruling comes nearly a full month after the sanctioning body instructed the two sides to reenter talks on February 8, though with the 15-day negotiation period ending with little progress made.

The minimum accepted bid is $200,000 for the middleweight title fight, with Golovkin to earn the favorable end of a 75/25 split as the WBA ‘Super’ champion.

While an attractive fight compared to most mandatories, a bidding war is not expected to come of the session. In fact, there stands the greater chance of one side giving up the title which would, in effect, leave the WBA with one recognized middleweight titlist.

Should the March 13 session produce a winning bidder, both sides will be required to commit in writing to enter the fight. Failure to do so would result in said party being stripped of his title per WBA Rule D.15 which states that “If the champion does not sign a bout contract within the required twenty (20) day period after the bid award or refuses otherwise to participate in the bout for the winning promoter, he shall be considered in violation of these Rules, and may have his title vacated.”

Kazakhstan’s Golovkin (42-2-1, 37KOs) is already down one title after he vacated his IBF middleweight belt on February 8 in lieu of a mandatory title defense versus Brazil’s Esquiva Falcao. The move came nearly four months after Golovkin petitioned the IBF to order the mandatory as means to delay a title consolidation clash versus Lara (29-3-3, 17KOs), as the two-time unified middleweight titlist ran out of exceptions with the WBA to avoid the fight.

The bout was previously ordered on September 23, six days after Golovkin fell short in his trilogy clash with Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez last September 17 in Las Vegas. The bout took place at super middleweight, where Golovkin unsuccessfully challenged for Alvarez’s undisputed championship while his own WBA/IBF/IBO middleweight title reign was not at risk.

Golovkin (42-2-1, 37KOs) previously inherited Lara as a mandatory challenger upon stopping Murata in the ninth round of their April 9 title unification bout in Saitama, Japan. The 40-year-old Kazakh boxer defended his IBF belt while claiming the WBA ‘Super’ title with the win.

The WBA refrained from ordering Golovkin to next face Lara due to an existing deal in place calling for the two-time unified middleweight titlist to face Alvarez in their trilogy clash. Golovkin had to get approval from the WBA, which represented his final exception in lieu of a mandatory title defense came with conditional approval from the WBA who reminded Golovkin that he would have 120 days to next face Lara.

The IBF belt will now be contested between Falcao (30-0, 20KOs) and Australia’s Michael Zerafa (31-4, 19KOs). Little movement was made in securing a deal for the ordered fight, which is now the subject of a March 14 purse bid hearing at IBF headquarters in Springfield, New Jersey—one day after the Golovkin-Lara hearing from WBA headquarters in Panama City.

Lara claimed the secondary WBA ‘World’ (Regular) middleweight title following a first-round knockout of aspiring contender Thomas ‘Cornflake’ LaManna last May 1 in Carson, California.

The Cuban export previously held the WBA 154-pound belt following two upgrades from the time of his December 2013 interim title win over Austin Trout. He was the highest-recognized WBA junior middleweight titlist following a December 2014 win over Ishe Smith, as Floyd Mayweather held the ‘Super’ version but never returned to the weight following his September 2013 win over Alvarez.

Lara was upgraded from ‘Regular’ to ‘Super’ champion prior to his January 2017 knockout win over a hobbled Yuri Foreman. His reign ended in a split decision defeat to Jarrett Hurd in their April 2018 WBA/IBF unification bout hailed by many outlets as the 2018 Fight of the Year.  

He then served as a secondary WBA junior middleweight titlist from August 2019 through August 2021, at which point he vacated the belt to instead campaign full time at middleweight—relatively speaking. Just one fight has followed, an eighth-round knockout of Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan on May 28 in Brooklyn, New York.

There have been rumors of Lara possibly facing former two-division titlist Danny Garcia. Such a fight cannot be made until he settles business with Golovkin—whether in the ring or through a technicality.

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox