Gennady Golovkin can't get bout with Miguel Cotto, settles for Willie Monroe
Sooner or later, Gennady Golovkin is going to get a major bout. But when WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto showed zero interest in a bout with the Kazakh killer, Golovkin quickly moved on to another opponent.
It's not an opponent who will please a lot of the hard-core fans who are desperate to see Golovkin tested against a known high-end commodity. But promoter Tom Loeffler said given the fact that he can't get the top fighters in the ring, the best choice as Golovkin's next opponent was Willie Monroe Jr.
Golovkin, who is coming off an 11th-round stoppage of Martin Murray in Monaco last month, will meet Monroe on HBO on May 16 at The Forum in Ingelwood, Calif.
Cotto hasn't defended the WBC middleweight title he won last June by stopping Sergio Martinez in New York. He passed on a proposed fight with Canelo Alvarez and, after he wasn't selected by Floyd Mayweather, opted to sign a deal with Roc Nation. Speculation is that Cotto is going to face Cornelius Bundrage in his next fight.
A Cotto-Bundrage fight is far less lucrative than a bout with either Alvarez or Golovkin would have been, but given that Cotto earned a reported $5 million signing bonus from Roc Nation, the pay he receives in the next bout may not matter as much.
But Golovkin didn't want to wait around and wanted to stay active, so Loeffler said he agreed to take on Monroe. Monroe, 28, is 19-1 but has little power and scored just six knockouts in his 20 bouts. As recently as Sept. 7, 2013, Monroe faced an opponent who went into the bout with a 3-35 record, so it's not expected to be a stiff challenge for Golovkin, who has six knockouts in his last six bouts.
"Gennady wants to fight and wants to be active and he wants to be in the big fights," 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.
"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."
Loeffler said tickets for the May 16 fight will go on sale Tuesday.
