Golovkin with chance to fight Lemieux-N’Dam winner

By Boxing News - 06/15/2015 - Comments

golovkin64By Dan Ambrose: It’s looking like the only chance that WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) has at getting a big fight in the near future is for him to wait until the smoke clears for the June 20th fight between David Lemieux (33-2, 31 KOs) and Hassan N’Dam (31-1, 18 KOs) this Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.

Lemieux and N’Dam are fighting for the vacant IBF middleweight title that was stripped from Jermain Taylor due to his legal problems. Golovkin has to hope that if Lemieux wins, Golden Boy Promotions, the promoters for Lemieux, will allow their fighter to face Golovkin in a unification fight.

In the best possible world, Golden Boy President Oscar De La Hoya will give the green light to allow Lemieux to take that fight because it would help increase Lemieux’s star power to have him fighting Golovkin, and it would give him a chance at winning the WBA title as well.

Even if Lemieux loses to Golovkin, he’ll still be more popular than he would if De La Hoya would have Lemieux milking his IBF title against obscure bottom dwellers. However, there are some who believe that De La Hoya won’t let Lemieux anywhere near Golovkin.

Instead, De La Hoya will look to match Lemieux up against Golden Boy’s flagship fighter Canelo in a unification fight in 2016, if the World Boxing Council let Canelo bypass the WBC mandatory challenger Golovkin just as the WBC is letting the current WBC champ Miguel Cotto bypass Golovkin.

It’s obviously going to look funny having Golovkin get passed up twice in a row by the WBC 160lb champion, but I believe the WBC will justify it in this case due to the Canelo-Lemieux fight being a unification match. As you know, unification fights take precedence over normal title defenses. The WBC can then let Canelo fight Lemieux in a unification fight with the condition that the winner of the fight will then face Golovkin. I wish it would it would work that way, but I don’t know if it will.

Golovkin is in a tough situation right now because he’s not promoted by Golden Boy Promotions for him to be in a good position to get a fight against Canelo. Cotto doesn’t have any real need to fight Golovkin because he’s at the end of his career and is merely looking to get the biggest paydays possible before he retires. Canelo is one of those paydays. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and/or Manny Pacquiao are another. Golovkin doesn’t compare those fighters in terms of the paydays Cotto can get before he retires.



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