According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, IBF Middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin could defend his title against mandatory challenger Kamil Szeremeta on February 29th in Chicago.
“Feb. 29 is the date we’re looking at here. We have a hold on the arena,” promoter Eddie Hearn said late Saturday night at a news conference at the arena after the event he promoted there in which former undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk made his heavyweight debut with a seventh-round knockout of Chazz Witherspoon in the main event.
“Gennadiy’s had back-to-back fights at the Garden, and we’ve seen from the ticket sales for this event (on Saturday night) that we have a good reputation and relationship with fight fans in [Chicago], and if he fights his mandatory, which is Szeremeta, the Polish fighter, then it would make sense to come here with such a huge Polish community. It’s not a definite, but it’s definitely a venue we’re looking at.
“It’s difficult to go to a place twice in the year with the schedule, but if there was a place we’d go twice to in a year, it would be Chicago. We’ve probably had our two biggest gates in this arena outside of [Anthony] Joshua-[Andy] Ruiz in America and it’s a great city.”
Hearn said that Szeremeta is pushing for his mandatory title fight with Golovkin and that GGG “wants to fight Canelo, but I don’t think he’s going to wait for a decision from Canelo. So it all depends on what happens in the next few weeks. Obviously, the Kovalev fight is only three weeks away. So it’s not like [Golovkin] can’t wait until then, but I don’t think he’s prepared to wait until December, etc., to have another fight [set up]. If the IBF say that the mandatory is due [since he won] a vacant title, which is generally what happens for a vacant belt, then he would jump in and take that fight.”
