Gennady Golovkin vs Dominic Wade set for April 23

IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler says the victor of the May 7 fight between WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (46-1-1, 32 KOs) and Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) will have 15 days to decide whether they’ll defend the WBC 160lb title against Golovkin next.

Golovkin, originally from Kazakhstan, is based out of the Los Angeles area.

“Because we couldn’t get another champion to fight, we chose the mandatory”, Golovkin promoter Tom Loeffler told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday morning. “Dominic Wade is a very hungry and skilled middleweight who is undefeated and will be another big test for me”.

Golovkin extended his knockout streak in October, drawing a sell-out crowd to Madison Square Garden as he added the IBF belt with an eighth-round stoppage of previously unbeaten David Lemieux.

Wade’s adviser is Al Haymon, whose fighters have not been welcome on HBO since 2013 after a bitter falling out.

But Loeffler isn’t concerned that the interim fights will have any bearing on these two squaring off later this year should both win their respective bouts.

With all the catchweight stipulations Alvarez has been insisting in his tentatively scheduled mandatory WBC title defense against Golovkin, there is a possibility the bout may not push through in the fall.

“We’re confident if “Canelo” – or the victor of that fight – doesn’t fight Gennady, they’ll be stripped of the [WBC] title”, Loeffler said. “If [Billy Joe] Saunders isn’t going to fight, if Canelo is not going to fight, we would consider a marketable name at 168 and Hopkins is more active than [Andre] Ward is, so it makes sense”. I’ve worked hard my entire career to get to this point.

Wade (18-0, 12 knockouts) was designated Golovkin’s mandatory challenger by the International Boxing Federation following a shoulder injury to Tureano Johnson. “His challenger, Dominic Wade, has a career-defining opportunity in front of him to usurp stardom with an upset, and we know he will bring his A-game on April 23”. I’m poised and ready to take on the challenge.

Jones has played host to big fights before, most recently the dud that was Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey. As Ambrose noted, Wade does not offer much interest to boxing fans except for him being a legitimate middleweight, compared to Canelo fighting a natural welterweight in Khan.