Lee opportunity looms as GGG-Jacobs deadlock continues

Talks between Gennady Golovkin and Danny Jacobs are continuing to move at a snail’s pace.

So much so, the WBA have ordered a purse bid to take place on December 10th for the fight which is hoped to take place on March 18th at the Madison Square Garden Arena in New York.

One man who may benefit for the apparent deadlock is Limerick’s Andy Lee [34(24)-3(2)-1].

WBA, IBF, and WBC champ Golovkin [36(33)-0] has long struggled to find willing opponents, and had hoped to defend his belts this weekend against Jacobs [32(19)-1(1)], who holds the largely-ignored WBA ‘regular’ trinket. The proposed bout would be delayed however due to objections from the Jacobs camp surrounding the split of money. The Brooklyn fighter and his people felt the WBA-mandated 75:25 split in favour of Golovkin was unfair and asked for 60:40. Golovkin promoter Tom Loeffler was willing to go higher, but not that high.

Former WBO champion Lee, who agreed to fight Golovkin in 2014 only to see the bout cancelled due to the death of the Kazakh’s father, may be the one to benefit should Jacobs, as some expect, withdraw from the running.

The fight-anyone Limerick southpaw would seem a logical choice for the St Patrick’s Weekend defence in New York, especially considering that there will be a large number of Irish fans already travelling over for the debut of Mick Conlan the night before and the appearance of Katie Taylor on the Golovkin undercard.