Playing Promoter: What’s Ahead For Gennady Golovkin?

Boxing has some new blood in it, some young guns that are starting to draw some buzz away from the old guard.

Nothing gets buzz like heavy hands, and an overwhelming desire to use them to ill effect. You’ve seen your desire to monitor what Lucas Matthysse does next grow in recent months, and the same goes for Gennady Golovkin.

He gloves up on June 29, of course, on HBO, against Matthew Macklin. I expect Macklin to be the stiffest test of Golovkin’s seven-year professional career, and as I think about how that one could unfold, I dial back to something the UK fighter said to me as he was counting down to a fight with Sergio Martinez: “I’m a hard man.”

Meaning, I won’t come to lay down, or pick up a paycheck, or go through the motions, or see survival as a “win.”

Golovkin has stopped his last 13 foes early, and many expect that streak will continue at Foxwoods in Connecticut, on a show promoted by K2 and Lou Dibella, who has Macklin. They note that Macklin is hard, but not impenetrable; he’s been stopped early twice, against Jamie Moore in 2006, and then again against Sergio Martinez, in round 11 of their March 2012 fight.

I talked to Golovkin’s promoter, Tom Loeffler of K2, about this bout, and what might come down the pike for the Kazahk fighter in the near future. “Gennady is focused on Macklin, we don’t underestimate him at all,” Loeffler said. “But as a promoter, you have to plan ahead. If he’s successful on June 29, we will make some plans with HBO.”

Loeffler said as far as he’s concerned, everywhere from 154 to 168 is still in play, but for right now, it makes sense to play the wrecking ball at 160. “It makes sense to dominate the middleweight division, and unify the title, if people will get in the ring with him,” Loeffler said.

I noted that belt-holder Daniel Geale, a 29-1 Aussie, could be a future dance partner. He meets Darren Barker on, whaddya know, HBO, Aug. 17, so it’s feeling like Golovkin and Geale could be on a course to collide. And foe Darren Barker would, I surmise, like to rearrange those best laid plans with a win over Geale. “Maybe the beginning of next year, you could see Gennady and Geale, or maybe Sergio Martinez might take the fight,” Loeffler said.

Titlist Peter Quillin, who I think highly of, doesn’t seem like a likely partner, as he works with Golden Boy, and they aren’t sharing the sandbox with HBO right now….

Loeffler also mentioned that a match between Golovkin and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. would be a fan-friendly faceoff, and tabbed Martin Murray, who gave Martinez all he could handle in Argentina last month, as another potential rival.

Readers, put on your promoter hat, and plot the course for Gennady Golovkin in his neat future.