By Dan Ambrose: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s father has reportedly passed away in Kazakhstan, and Golovkin now won’t be available to fight on April 26th like his promoters at K2 Promotion had planed. Golovkin’s April 26th fight against Andy Lee was supposed to be announced this weekend, but that’s not going to happen now. Golovkin will be traveling back to Kazakhstan to be with his family members. As for when his next fight will take place, it’s unknown at this time.
However, Golovkin won’t be fighting Andy Lee when he does return to the ring this year, because Top Rank promoter Bob arum is interested in matching Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. up against Golovkin for later this year.
“He can’t fight on April 26,” [Tom] Loeffler said to ESPN. “There’s a 40-day mourning period. He will be staying with his family. His two older brothers died (in military action) and he’s now the patriarch of the family. He’s got to take responsibility. It’s very sensitive. Bob [Arum] approached me with the idea of the Chavez fight and we’ve always said Gennady would go up to 168 for the right fight.”
Golovkin is a small a middleweight, and he would be giving away massive amounts of weight in moving up to the super middleweight division to face the hulking Chavez Jr. But if Sergio Martinez was able to clown Chavez Jr. in beating him by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2012, then Golovkin will likely dominate and possibly even stop Chavez Jr. Even Brian Vera fought well enough to deserve a fight against Chavez Jr. in their fight last year, and he fought well enough to lose by fairly close set of scores tonight in their rematch at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
Of course, Golovkin will be opening himself up for all kinds of criticism by moving up in weight to fight Chavez Jr. at 168, because the excuse that his team has used for not fighting WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward is that Golovkin still hasn’t cleaned out the middleweight division yet, and he can’t fight him until he does that. What kind of tips you off about this being a poor excuse is seeing Golovkin fighting mediocre middleweights like Osumanu Adama and Nobuhiro Ishida.
Arum will be seen as throwing Chavez Jr. to Golovkin if he makes this fight, because it’s pretty much as guaranteed loss for Chavez Jr. The fact that Chavez Jr. will be losing the fight is beyond doubt. The only question is in what manner the defeat will occur. Will be a knockout or a decision loss?
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