By Jeff Sorby: WBA World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (25-0, 22 KO’s) will be fighting in March or possibly April against a still to be determined opponent. Former EBU middleweight champion Darren Barker is a possibility as he’s been mentioned as one of the candidates.
Barker is also interested in the fight. There are some others that Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is looking at for the date. Whoever gets the fight let’s hope they’re better than Golovkin’s last opponent Gabriel Rosado, who Golovkin stopped in the 7th round last Saturday night.
Rosado didn’t attempt to make a fight of it as he was off to the faces as soon as the fight started. It was seven runs of running and a lot of bleeding by Rosado, and it just looked like he was there to spoil instead of fight. Golovkin’s promoter needs to be more selective in the future to make sure he finds guys that actually come to fight because matching him up against guys that run isn’t going to help Golovkin become more popular in the United States.
Barker is a ranked fighter and he previously fought WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez back in 2011 in losing by an 11th round knockout. Barker mostly just stood on the outside throwing jabs and not taking any chances. Loeffler would be better off looking for more of an opponent that mixes it up more because Golovkin might have to chase Barker around the ring as well, and that’s not interesting to boxing fans.
Golovkin needs a good contender that will be there for him to trade with. One of the problems Loeffler may find is that there really isn’t a lot of good fighters at middleweight to choose from, so the chances are going to be fairly high that he’ll have to settle for a badly flawed fighter for Golovkin.
If Loeffler wants to match Golovkin with another junior middleweight then hopefully he puts him in with someone that is interesting like Austin Trout or Cornelius Bundrage. I would say Saul Alvarez but I don’t think Golden Boy would ever allow Alvarez to fight Golovkin, even if he came down to 154 to fight him. They’re matching Alvarez up with a certain type of fighter and Golovkin doesn’t fit the mold.