Miguel Cotto, the WBC middleweight champion, agreeing to fight Gennady "GGG" Golovkin, the WBA and IBO middleweight champion would be huge news. It's not happening anytime soon though, as Golovkin has settled on Willie Monroe Jr. for his next fight, which will happen at The Forum in Inglewood on May 16.
"Gennady wants to fight and wants to be active and he wants to be in the big fights," Golovkin's promoter Tom Loeffler said. "I reached out to the Cotto camp, but I got zero response whatsoever. Gennady wants to fight three or four times a year and stay active, so Monroe made sense. He's ranked No. 2 in the WBA and he's got a contrasting style. He's a slick boxer and so it should be interesting."
While names of lighter fighters such as Timothy Bradley and Brandon Rios have emerged, as well as welterweight Amir Khan, there is a growing sense Cotto will opt to fight former junior middleweight titlist Cornelius "K-9" Bundrage in his next bout.
Bundrage has power (19 KO), but he's a slow-footed brawler who figures to struggle mightily with Cotto's boxing ability. He's won his last two fights in blowout fashion, rebounding from a dull loss to Ishe Smith in 2013 that cost him his IBF junior middleweight belt.
Monroe Jr. is 19-1-0 with just six knockouts, and his resume is bereft of name opponents. Loeffler is counting on Golovkin's rising popularity to carry this bout, and brought up the fervor he generated when he fought Marco Antonio Rubio at The Forum last year.
"We got a great response the last time we fought [in the Los Angeles area] against [Marco Antonio] Rubio, so we wanted to continue that momentum."
[Yahoo]
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