By Steve Kim
On Wednesday it was announced by the International Boxing Federation that they were stripping Gennady Golovkin as their middleweight champion for failing to agree to fight his mandatory challenger Sergey Derevyanchenko by August 3rd after granting him an exception to face Vanes Martirosyan on May 5th.
After Saul Alvarez tested positive for clenbuterol and was suspended by the Nevada Athletic Commission, which scuttled their rematch for May 5th, Martirosyan was chosen as a late fill-in to face 'GGG' at the StubHub Center in Carson, California
Golovkin picked up the IBF title back in October of 2015 as he defeated David Lemieux in eight rounds in what was a unification bout at the Madison Square Garden in New York. Golovkin still holds the WBC, IBO and WBA belts.
"I think it's unfortunate that they stripped one of their best champions in the history of their organization," Tom Loeffler told BoxingScene.com regarding the IBF's ruling.
"'Triple G' always complied with their rules, they had assigned a mandatory immediately that wasn't very marketable, that we got criticized for on our side, Dominick Wade," added Loeffler, who then referenced their bout with Danny Jacobs from March of last year.
"They created an uneven competitive playing field to the champion's disadvantage when they forced their champion to do a second-day weigh-in and the challenger [Jacobs] got a huge advantage by not having the second-day weigh-in and basically having two days to rehydrate and to put on a lot more weight than the champion."
But what irks Loeffler is - "they didn't even call the mandatory for Derevyanchenko. Derevyanchenko wasn't even asking to get 'Triple G' stripped. They [IBF] wanted to strip 'Triple G' and now the IBF has denied Derevyanchenko to fight 'Triple G' and us to work out a deal with his promoter. But at the end of the day, just like we've abided by their other rules we're going to abide by their decision. If they want to strip 'Triple G' that's their prerogative.
"We don't agree with it by any stretch but we're going to focus on ** the biggest fight for Gennady the next time around," continued Loeffler, who says he is still trying to make the rematch for September with 'Canelo'.
"We know for sure now it's definitely not going to be Derevyanchenko."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
2023-10-21 04:49:13
