By Allan Fox: A fight between WBA middleweight Gennady Golovkin (29-0, 26 KO’s) and former IBF/WBA 160lb. champion Daniel Geale (30-2, 16 KO’s) has been given the green light for July 26th, according to AAP. The World Boxing Association granted Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler’s request to let Golovkin bypass an WBA ordered title defense against #2 WBA Jarrod Fletcher in order to take a bigger and far more interesting fight against Geale.
The Golovkin-Geale fight will be televised by HBO. It’s possible that the co-feature will see heavyweights Bryant Jennings and Mike Perez facing each other in a battle of unbeaten heavyweights. The fight card is probably going to need a lot more than this for it to have a chance of selling out the garden because the Australian Geale doesn’t have a fan base in the New York area, and Golovkin still isn’t a huge ticket seller either.
Golovkin brings in good ratings in his fights on HBO, but he’s not someone that you can count on to sell out a place as big as Madison Square Garden unless they reduce the price of the tickets considerably to get a low enough price to draw fans to the card.
What hurts the Golovkin-Geale fight from being as big as it could be is the fact that Geale was beaten by Darren Barker just last year on HBO in August in a fight that took place in Atlantic City. Barker was too strong for Geale, and he was able to control the fight for the most part with his power advantage despite a close call in the 6th round when he was dropped by a body shot from Geale.
Golovkin really needs notable opposition because the division is pretty much empty of big name fighters, and the good ones that are there haven’t shown much interest in fighting Golovkin. He’s kind of avoided the same way that Andre Ward is avoided in the super middleweight division.
If Golovkin destroys Geale, it’ll likely make it even more difficult for Golovkin to get the big names in the middleweight division to fight him. In truth, there’s really only two big name at 160 besides Martinez and Golovkin and that’s Peter Quillin and Felix Sturm. Quillin will likely never fight Golovkin due to him working on a different cable network, and Sturm is coming off of a loss to Sam Soliman from last Saturday night.
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