Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin will return to the ring on May 16 to make the 14th defense of his middleweight world title against Willie Monroe Jr in California.
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Fresh from his win over Martin Murray last month, Golovkin reportedly hopes to fight four times this year as he looks to clean up the middleweight division before a potential step up in weight class.
The Kazakh knock-out specialist will face a tough test in his next bout against Monroe Jr, a slick southpaw who has a 19-1 record and has won his last nine straight fights.
However, ‘GGG’ is naturally the strong favourite to prevail given that he is 32-0 with 29 KOS and is currently on a knockout streak of 19.
Nevertheless, the plan is for the 32-year-old is to continue to build his profile in the USA and he will be making his second appearance in California and will hope to put on another show after his second-round destruction of Marco Antonio Rubio last October.
“Gennady likes the challenge of fighting a southpaw,” K2 Promotions managing director Tom Loeffler told ESPN.
“He has not fought a southpaw since [his American debut against Grzegorz] Proksa [in 2012]. So Willie is a southpaw and he also has been on ESPN four times in the past years between winning the Boxcino tournament and beating Vera. Willie beat two undefeated guys in the Boxcino tournament (Adams and Vitaliy Kopylenko), so he made sense for this particular fight.”
It is no secret that Golovkin wishes to face fellow champion Miguel Cotto, but the Puerto Rican is expected to make an optional defense of his title in June and has been rumoured to be less than keen on taking the bout.
Loeffler added that he reached out to Cotto’s camp but heard nothing back, but it remains to be seen whether or not that is a fight that they can make further down the line as both men continue to defend their respective belts for the time being.
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