By Steve Kim
It's been about two weeks since unified middleweight unified champion, Gennady Golovkin, blasted out Vanes Martirosyan out in two rounds.
Originally, Golovkin was scheduled to face Saul Alvarez on May 5th until the Mexican star tested positive for clenbuterol and was suspended six months by the Nevada Athletic Commission.
As for the chance of this rematch taking place now in September, Tom Loeffler, stated to BoxingScene.com - "Still ongoing negotiations with Golden Boy. It's the biggest fight of the year - it's the biggest fight for both guys. So Gennady took a week off after his last fight and now we're getting back into the business side of things."
On Thursday afternoon Golovkin was at the Wild Card West gym in Santa Monica for a quick photo shoot. He still looked to be in fighting shape. It's clear that Golovkin will have at least one more fight in 2018 but the question is can he get his desired third bout this calendar year?
"I think so," said an optimistic Loeffler, "everything depends on what happens in the next fight. Just like with May 5, he doesn't win on May 5 we wouldn't be talking about a rematch (versus Alvarez). So if everything goes the right way with his next fight than the plan would be for him to come back and fight again in December of this year."
As of now, Golovkin is still the IBF champion (along with owning the WBC, IBO and WBA titles) - but it's not clear how long he'll have that belt as the IBF declined to sanction the Martirosyan bout and stated that he must face his number one contender, Sergey Derevyanchenko, by August 3rd.
Of that situation, Loeffler says - "We're flying to New Jersey for the appeal hearing. So they approved our request to fight Vanes as an unsanctioned bout which isn't unusual for a unified champion but the conditions that were imposed on that appeal go against some of their rules so we're looking to have some clarification of what those conditions are.
"Really it shouldn't have even come into play because under the circumstances - that were outside of Gennady's control - it was the WBC's turn. Derevyanchenko wasn't up to fighting May 5. So it wasn't really putting him back. If the IBF wants to now impose their mandatory, that's really where this starts and I can sit down and negotiate with Lou (DiBella) and see what their position is."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
