Gennady "GGG" Golovkin made another statement this weekend, knocking out Marco Antonio Rubio in the second round in front of a Stubhub Center crowd that sold out the venue a month in advance, and required additional seating.
Rubio entered the fight with a 59-6-1 record that included 51 victories by knockout; also, Rubio had never been stopped before. That meant little to Golovkin, who stretched his consecutive knockouts streak to 18.
Still, Golovkin has yet to have the marquee victory that brings about "elite" status. After the fight, he once again called out WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto.
"I will fight anybody. I think first Miguel Cotto," he said. "I respect Canelo, he is good, but Chavez, too. But first Miguel Cotto."
Cotto has not expressed much interest in facing Golovkin, and his demolition of Rubio, who missed weight by nearly two pounds and ballooned to 181 pounds after re-hydrating, is not likely to invite Cotto. The Puerto Rican icon is very small for the middleweight division, and fought at a 159-pound catchweight when he defeated Sergio Martinez for the title.
There is also the prospect on the horizon of an enormous payday next May against Canelo Alvarez, who has just switched allegiances from Showtime to HBO. Both camps have expressed great interest in making that fight happen, and Alvarez has insisted on fighting on the weekend of Cinco De Mayo, a date traditionally reserved for Floyd Mayweather Jr.
For Canelo to potentially compete with "Money" Mayweather, he would need an opponent the caliber of Cotto.
In the meantime, Golovkin is rumored to be in talks with middleweight Martin Murray about a potential bout this winter, provided he gets past his upcoming opponent Domenico Spada. Golovkin's promoter Tom Loeffler has said that Murray is a "natural" next opponent.
Still, their eyes are on Cotto and Golovkin's win over Rubio inched him closer to that. "This puts Gennady in for a mandatory [fight] with the winner of that [likely] fight," Loeffler said.
"That was our strategy for fighting Rubio, besides the fact that as a Mexican this was the perfect location for the fight, and Gennady put on a great performance."
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