By Steve Kim
Eric Gomez, the president of Golden Boy Promotions has advised BoxingScene.com that Spike O'Sullivan is no longer in the running to face unified middleweight champion Gennady Gololvkin, on May 5th.
Gomez explained to BoxingScene - "Ultimately, short time, short money. Two negatives don't make a positive, here. So he's not going to do the fight. He'd have three weeks to get ready for Golovkin and he wants to win.
"It was a hard decision but he wants to win and he ultimately said,'If I'm going to go into a big fight like this I need the right time to prepare for a Golovkin.'"
So what's next for O'Sullivan, who in his last bout stopped Antoine Douglas in seven rounds back in mid-December on HBO?
''We're going to do an L.A. fight for him at the StubHub Center," said Gomez, who mentioned that hot prospect, Ryan Garcia, would be co-headlining that ESPN card.
Originally, Gololvkin was scheduled to face Mexican superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in their anticipated rematch but when Canelo made a decision last week to withdraw from the fight after testing positive for clenbuterol, all those plans were scuttled.
As for how that would impact Golovkin's plans to fight on May 5th at the same venue, Gomez stated - "I don't know what Tom (Loeffler's) going to do, I don't represent Golovkin. We're going to go May 4th, Tom's aware of it."
Now, Golden Boy works on raising O'Sullivan's profile.
"Spike is a star and we're going to expose him here in the U.S. as a star," said Gomez."The guy has star potential, he's got a good style and we're going to keep him busy because eventually, yes he's going to fight Golovkin or 'Canelo'."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
