#11 WBA, Matthew Macklin (29-4, 20 KO’s) will be getting a title shot next month against WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (26-0, 23 KO’s) on June 29th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Macklin is mostly known to U.S casual boxing fans for his spirited effort in dragging Sergio Martinez into the 11th round last year in March before getting stopped by him.
Although Macklin lost the fight, he got a lot of credit for having given Martinez a tough time along the way. Now, however, Macklin is going to have to prove himself again, but this time against a younger fighter with more power and arguably more skills than Martinez in Gennady Golovkin.
For some reason the World Boxing Council (WBC) has dropped Amir Khan from their top 15 welterweight rankings after his struggle to defeat 33-year-old Julio Diaz last month on April 27th. Before that fight the WBC had elevated Khan to #2 in their welterweight rankings despite the fact that Khan had never fought at welterweight before and had lost two out of his last three fights.
Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan makes it perfectly clear that he doesn’t have even the slightest amount of interest in facing fellow Brit Kell Brook at any time in the future.
Promoter Eddie Hearn is interested in matching his very lucky fighter WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) against former lightweight contender Gavin Rees (37-2-1, 18 KO’s) this coming September. Rees is coming off of a 5th round knockout loss to WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner last February in a fight where Rees looked terrible in before getting knocked out.
#8 WBC Manuel Charr (23-1, 13 KO’s) has a near hopeless dream of getting a rematch against WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, who made short work of Charr in stopping him in the 4th round last year in September. Charr has it in his head that all he has to do to get another nice paying bout against Vitali is for him to beat David Haye (26-2, 24 KO’s) next month in their fight on June 29th in the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
Eddie Hearn has ruled out what would be a lucrative fight between his fighter IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch and 48-year-old IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins this year in September. Hearn doesn’t want Froch to be fighting guys that are slightly bigger than him like Hopkins because he sees it as putting Froch in a difficult position.
We’ve seen IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (30-2, 22 KO’s) talk about retirement if he were to lose, and now WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (46-2, 35 KO’s) is saying he’ll retire if he loses to Froch in their fight this month on May 25th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Eddie Hearn, the promoter for WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns, won’t bother giving injured challenger Jose Gonzalez a chance for a rematch after he injured his left wrist and was halted in the 9th round last Saturday night.
In what appears to be WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) making a partial excuse for his poor performance last Saturday night in beating Jose Gonzalez (22-1, 17 KO’s) by a 9th round stoppage, Burns complained after the fight that he hadn’t been able to study Gonzalez going into the fight because of the lack of video out there on the 29-year-old fighter from Puerto Rico. 