Middleweight champion Gennady "GGG" Golovkin has knocked out 20 straight opponents, and his record stands at a perfect 33-0-0 with 30 knockouts, but his fame hasn't reached its apex because boxing's name fighters are avoiding him like the plague.
Golovkin dreams of unifying the 160-pound weight class, but the paradox is that he can't do that until he's built his name up, even though the only way to build his name up is to defeat popular, known opponents. That's why stepping up to 168 pounds to fight Carl "The Cobra" Froch makes sense for Golovkin.
The question is does it make sense for Froch?
Financially, Sky Sports chairman Barry Hearn said he is confident Froch will make a ton of money facing Golovkin by selling out the 80,000-seat Wembley Stadium. "I would love to see the fight," he told Sky Sports. "Obviously Carl Froch is a friend, he's a great ambassador for British boxing and a superstar.
"I think Gennady Golovkin is one of the great talents at middleweight. Now will he take that power into super-middleweight, where Froch is such a dangerous animal? It has all the ingredients of a great fight."
At 37 years old, however, there are questions about whether Froch will even fight again at all, let alone against the most destructive fighter currently active. Froch's own promoter Eddie Hearn has expressed concern about the danger Froch would be in vs. Golovkin if he's fighting for money and not to win.
"If you're going to fight unmotivated, given the way he fights, you're going to get hurt," Hearn said earlier this month. "I don't think anyone would like to see that.
"I think we might have reached the end of the road for Carl. The WBA have stripped him and it's not unexpected. We were expecting it because you can't just sit on belts. It's fair enough because he's got no fight planned and no fight scheduled."
Froch himself said that if Golovkin were his opponent, that would be the present danger needed for him to get into prime fighting condition.
"I need the motivation, I need the fear factor and Golovkin brings that," Froch told BBC. "If I decide to fight again, Golovkin's an opponent I'd definitely like. But it's a very big if because one of my options is to retire."
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