Golovkin
Gennady Golovkin said he cannot wait to get back in the boxing ring. Reuters/Eric Gaillard (MONACO - Tags: SPORT BOXING)

Unified middleweight titlist Gennady Golovkin cannot wait to return to the boxing ring and entertain boxing fans around the world.

Golovkin has been out of action for almost three months after destroying David Lemieux in October for the IBF middleweight belt. But the undefeated Kazakh will have to wait another two months before he can return to the boxing ring.

Before his much-anticipated match against WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Golovkin is scheduled to fight upcoming boxer Dominic Wade for the IBF middleweight title on Apr. 23 at the Forum in Inglewood, California. According to Dan Ambrose of Boxing News 24, fighting the 25-year-old Wade would serve as a warm-up to get GGG ready for a bigger fight against Alvarez.

“Golovkin might need to carry Wade if he wants the fight to go six rounds,” Ambrose wrote. “He’s a step down from Golovkin’s last opponent Lemieux, and he’s not going to have anything to keep Golovkin off of him in terms of punching power.”

However, a Golovkin vs Wade bout would not be as marketable as Alvarez fighting Amir Khan on May 7. 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.

Meanwhile, rumours about Golovkin possibly fighting a retiring Bernard Hopkins have been circulating after the 51-year-old called out the Kazakh earlier this month.

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. If that happens, K2 Promotions managing director Tom Loeffler said his team was ready to open negotiations for a Golovkin vs Hopkins card.

“I’ve always said that if there’s a middleweight champion willing to fight him, it’s always going to be the priority,” Loeffler said, reports Boxing Scene. “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.”

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