Gennady Golovkin Must Face Daniel Jacobs Next, According to WBA

According to reports across the boxing world, the WBA has ordered Gennady Golovkin to face fellow middleweight titlist Daniel Jacobs next.

Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) must take on Jacobs within 120 days, according to the demands by the WBA. The sanctioning body’s president, Gilberto Mendoza Jr., said that the 30-day negotiation period has begun and should both camps fail to come to an agreement on meeting in the ring, the fight will go to purse bid.

Though the bout would be arguably among the best of the year in terms of the greatness of both men, it’s unlikely to happen. Golovkin, who is fresh off a fifth-round stoppage of IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook on Saturday, said he would like to unify his WBA, IBF and WBC middleweight titles with current WBO 160-pound champ Billy Joe Saunders. From there, “GGG” hopes to land a mega fight with Mexican superstar Saul “Canelo” Alvarez at some point in 2017. It seems for now that Jacobs is not on Golovkin’s radar.

Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) also fought on Saturday, where he trounced Sergio Mora before finally stopping him in the seventh to retain his WBA title as well. “Miracle Man” knocked Mora down a total of five times in the bout, this after coming off a sensational first-round destruction of Peter Quillin in December.

The reason why the WBA is ordering an actual super fight to occur -- an extremely rare demand for a sanctioning body -- is because Jacobs captured the WBA’s “regular” middleweight title when he torched Quillin, who won the vacant version of it in 2014 when he stopped Jarrod Fletcher. Golovkin used to own the belt because he won it back in 2010 when he crushed Nilson Julio Tapia within three but when he won the IBO belt in the same division, the WBA made him its “super” champion at middleweight (which still keeps him as the champion) and then made the “regular” belt vacant, the belt that Jacobs now owns.

If the WBA gets its way, its “super” champion will face-off against its “regular” champion to determine who will own the real version of the WBA middleweight title. It’s a move that will guarantee that the WBA nabs as much of a sanctioning fee as possible by forcing both men to pay fees. But the real caveat to the whole scenario is that whoever would prevail in this excellent potential matchup would automatically become the WBA’s “super” champion, making the “regular” title vacant again, re-creating the endless vicious cycle.