MY NEW YEAR FEAR: Gennady Golovkin vs. Ricardo Mayorga

Wait, what.

Mayorga?

That beer swiller, that tobacco huffer, is still in the mix?

And he wants to fight who??

Golovkin?

Is he still even active…and if yes, has he progressed from entertainingly goofy and profane to the realm of suicidal ideation?

Yep, the concept of a Gennady Golovkin vs. Ricardo Mayorga was pin-balling around the Twittersphere the other day and but of course I figured it was nonsense, likely the fruit borne of an amusing character dump from a fake Mayorga account, or something.

Just to be sure, I reached out to “Honest” Abel Sanchez, “The Fight Game” Trainer of the Year, and asked him to confirm there was nothing to this Golovkin-Mayorga talk. He complied…

“I have not heard that from promoter Tom Loeffler, so I assume not,” Sanchez told me.

For the record, Mayorga is still active, and in fact fought twice in 2014, while also flirting with some MMA work. But, he’s 41, and after fighting and losing to Miguel Cotto in 2011—and actually giving an OK account of himself, especially for someone who isn’t inclined to ditch the brews and smokes during camp—he’s not been in tough.

Another name I have been hearing kicking around for Golovkin IF he gets past Martin Murray on Feb. 21, is the telegenic Canadian with two-fisted pop, David Lemieux. Is he a viable candidate for Trip G’s next after his actual next? “I would think that is a possible name, after his fight with Gabriel Rosado…hopefully his people don’t think ‘lottery ticket,’ and are in fact interested in really making the fight, and they speak with Tom, and really try and make the fight.”

I also asked Sanchez if his kid was nearing the point where boredom might be an issue. After all, there comes a time when someone gets tired of playing the Dew Drop Inns and the like when they know they could and should be headlining the big barns. “No, Gennady loves his life, he is patient, he understands the game,” the tutor told me. No, Murray isn’t an A grade name, but “he is a guy with decent credentials, and two marquee fights under his belt (against Felix Sturm and Sergio Martinez).”

If the expected occurs, and GGG makes Murray 0-2-1 in marquee scraps, Sanchez can see Trip G fighting in May, and then fighting the winner of the Miguel Cotto-Canelo Alvarez tussle, if that notoriously hard-balling Team Cotto crew makes a New Year’s resolution to back off a tad on asks, if you believe some grapevine chatter…which is often but not always righteous.

Sanchez has been around this merry go round enough times to have needed to use the anti nausea med a few times. He’ll look ahead, after Murray gets the business, and hope that people don’t price themselves out of a waltz, or, if a Canelo beats Cotto, some people don’t prevail on the carrot-top to do a detour dance, and pursue a less risky clash than one with GGG. Oscar De La Hoya might not want to risk his “meal ticket,” Sanchez theorized. “In the meantime, we stay busy, stay relevant, great fights will come. Patience!” he said, with admirable sagacity.

I can foresee a pattern continuing where Golovkin keeps on being avoided, like that party lady at the swell soiree who is the total package bodily, facially and personality-wise…but who sports that hint of a cold sore on her lip which sends an anti-social signal. If that occurs, might Golovkin steer toward a meetup with Andre Ward, who told me he thinks there’s a good chance gloves up in the next few months? What about Golovkin vs. Ward, maybe at a catchweight of 164 pounds? “The Murray outcome will lay out our future and make it more clear,” the trainer answered.

Sanchez is among those who thinks Al Haymon will let some of his young guns out of their pens, put them in tough in 2015 after a year off of risky pairings. “It’s possible, when they start getting restless,” he said. “And they will…Adonis Stevenson is being talked about for Sergey Kovalev.”

You heard Jim Lampley take Haymon to task for being risk averse, for steering his cats away from dogfights, and toward kind-odds tangles…but Haymon hasn’t shown that he cares about such commentary, and in fact, why should he, unless his matchmaking gets to the point where fans are choosing to avoid tuning in to events with the Haymon stamp on them. There is a growing chorus of fans taking to social media to agitate for the Haymon hustle to cease, and for his stable to be entered into meaningful coin-flip scraps…me, I’m going to assume that will happen at an acceptable level in 2015, or even Teflon Al will experience some blowback. “It’s all good for boxing, the best eventually fighting the best,” said Sanchez, in closing. To that I say, amen, sir.

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