Third time was not the charm for Gennady Golovkin in terms of finding an opponent for his scheduled May 5 fight.
Gary "Spike" O'Sullivan, long rumored to be the favorite to fight Golovkin, the unified WBA, WBC and IBF middleweight champion, on May 5 has bowed out of the fight. Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times reports that O'Sullivan was not willing to take "short money" on "short notice."
O'Sullivan, who had been preparing to fight on May 5, will now fight on the May 4 Golden Boy Boxing on ESPN event, according to Golden Boy Promotions President Eric Gomez. The May 4 fight will be O'Sullivan's first fight since scoring the biggest win of his career when he defeated Antoine Douglas last year.
As for Golovkin, this would now be the third opponent who was offered a fight with Golovkin who, for some reason, wasn't able to secure the bout. Jaime Munguia, an unbeaten Mexican prospect, was rejected by the Nevada State Athletic Commission as an opponent for Golovkin.
Afterwards, Golovkin and his team tried to see if he could fight at the StubHub Center in California against Vanes Martirosyan. Martirosyan was approved by the California State Athletic Commission and by the WBA and WBC to be Golovkin's opponent. According to Martirosyan, the IBF rejected him as an opponent with a likely reason being that the IBF already has a mandatory challenger for Golovkin's IBF middleweight title in Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Promoter Lou DiBella had been aggressively pushing for the governing body to mandate Golovkin to fight Derevyanchenko.
Golovkin originally was supposed to fight Canelo Alvarez at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on May 5. After Alvarez withdrew from the fight due to two failed drug tests for traces of clenbuterol, Golovkin was set to have his fight take place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena against an unnamed opponent before reports surfaced that he was looking at moving his fight to the StubHub Center where he fought back in 2014.
