By Dan Ambrose: The International Boxing Federation has given IBF/WBA middleweight champion Daniel Geale (28-1, 15 KO’s) to bypass his mandatory challenger #1 IBF Sam Soliman to fight a rematch against 37-year-old #9 IBF Anthony Mundine (44-4, 26 KO’s) next. Mundine has already beaten Geale three years ago by a 12 round split decision in 2009.

Both fighters are Australian, so it means a lot of money for both. There’s talk of the Geale-Mundine fight being televised on pay per view, which obviously would take place in Australia and not the U.S because it wouldn’t sell in America.

The Soliman fight would bring Geale a good payday as well given that he’s also Australian, but Mundine is the much bigger fight.

By choosing to fight Mundine, Geale could end up being stripped of his WBA title by the World Boxing Association because they reportedly had given Geale until December 31st to make the fight with WBA World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and that’s not happening.

It’s unclear when or if the WBA will go ahead and strip Geale or if this rule will be bent to allow Geale to bypass the defence of his WBA title against the dangerous Golovkin. It’s doubtful that Geale will still end up facing Golovkin even next year. It’s a hard fight for Geale, and perhaps not a winnable one. He’s probably better off fighting guys like Sam Soliman, Mundine and the contenders that the IBF has ranked in their top 15.

Geale defeated previous WBA Super World middleweight champion Felix Sturm by a 12 round split decision last September to capture the WBA title. What was special about that win was that Geale beat Sturm in his home country of Germany. However, the fight was really close and it could have gone either way. It would have been great to see a rematch between the two of them instead of seeing Geale move onto the Australian clash between Mundine, but you can’t blame Geale for wanting to take the bigger money fight with Mundine.

Mundine’s career has been in the slow lane since 2006, which is when he was beaten by Mikkel Kessler, Since then, Mundine has mostly fought in Australia against Australian fighters and he’s really limited himself by doing this. It’s hard to understand why he wasted all those years fighting mostly local guys but I guess he had his reasons. Recently, Mundine started fighting guys from other parts of the world, beating Rigoberto and Bronco McKart while talking about his ambition to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. It’s really hard to take that talk serious because Mundine is a complete unknown in the U.S outside of hardcore boxing fans.

It didn’t have to be that way if Mundine had been fighting guys in the U.S or from around the rest of the world instead of just focusing mainly on Australian fighters. Not it’s pretty much too late for Mundine for fights like that. I can’t see it ever happening. Fighting Geale might be about as good as it gets for Mundine. Perhaps Mundine might be interested in facing Golovkin if he is able to defeat Geale, but then again that’s probably not the big money fight that Mundine was hoping to get.