golovin1 By Dan Ambrose: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) will be out of action for at least another three more months at the minimum, as HBO won’t be televising any boxing in August or September for some reason. They plan on taking the remainder of the summer off after July.

Its bad news for boxing fans who specifically subscribe to HBO in order to get their fix for the sport. With them taking off two months out of 12 months, it’s not great news for the fans that shell out money to subscribe to the network.

The time off will give Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler to try and find a good opponent for him to face when he does return to the ring.

As for who Golovkin could face next, it’s open for speculation. Golovkin might be better off pooling from the junior middleweight division if he wants to find a decent opponent. If Loeffler was willing to come up with a good offer, he might be able to get the likes of Demetrius Andrade or Erislandy Lara to move up to middleweight to face Golovkin.

Good chance HBO won't have #boxing in Aug or Sep but will have GGG, Klitschko-Fury, Crawford, Bradley, Cotto-Canelo (PPV), etc b4 years end.

— Dan Rafael (@danrafaelespn) July 14, 2015

Those would be tougher than the guys that Golovkin has been facing, and maybe Loeffler might not want to put him in with guys at that level. But if Golovkin is for real, he’s got to be able to beat fighters like Lara and Andrade. If he wants to compete with the likes of Canelo and Cotto, then he needs to show that he can beat other top junior middleweights. Andrade would be perfect, as would Jermall Charlo. Lara would be a little more difficult because he moves around the ring constantly like Keith Thurman, and Golovkin would have cut off the ring if he wanted to land his power shots.

Earlier today, former IBF/WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch retired from the sport. That was a fairly big blow to Golovkin because he and Loeffler were hoping that Froch would consider facing him this year in a pay-per-view fight in the UK. Froch entertained the idea, but after stewing on it for over a month, he came back today and decided it was better to retire rather the continue his career.

Having Froch out of the picture, removes one of Golovkin’s best chances for a big fight. He’s likely going to have to choose one of the WBA’s contenders for his next fight while he waits for the outcome of the November fight between WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Golovkin is counting on fighting the winner of that fight.

If the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight decides to vacate the WBC title or dare the WBC to strip them of it, then Golovkin will be declared the WBC middleweight champion outside of the ring. That’s not how Golovkin wants to win the WBC title, but if that’s all he can get then he’ll take it.

Golovkin would then be able to defend against the contenders for both the WBA and WBC title, which is a better deal for him because he’ll increase his chances of getting some good contenders. The WBA doesn’t always have great contenders for him to defend his title against, but the WBC frequently has some good ones listed. Whether they’ll be willing to fight Golovkin is another thing.