No Golovkin fight for Lee as Jacobs answers the call
Andy Lee [34(24)-3(2)-1] will not be fighting Gennady Golovkin in his next bout as it has this evening been confirmed that the Kazakh destroyer will face Danny Jacobs next March.
Golovkin [36(33)-0] and Jacobs had been stuck in negotiations for a long period, and with purse bids approaching next week, Limerick’s Lee was hoping to avail of the deadlock and secure a fight with the champion over the seemingly unwilling New Yorker who was said to have issues with the proposed split of the money.
However, both Jacobs [32(29)-1(1)] and Golovkin have confirmed today that an agreement has finally been reached and they will face each other for the Asian’s WBC, WBA, and IBF titles on HBO PPV.
Lee himself took the fight announcement with his trademark good grace, congratulating Jacobs on the match-up.
Congratulations. Great fight. https://t.co/Ev5Qrz6UVb
— Andy Lee (@AndyLeeBoxing) December 17, 2016
Thankfully it has been confirmed that the fight will take place in New York at the Madison Square Garden Arena on Saturday March 18th, and Bray’s Katie Taylor looks set to feature on the undercard. The finalised date ensures that, should they want to and should they source tickets, Irish fans heading to the Big Apple for Mick Conlan‘s debut on March 17th will also be able to take in this card.
Former WBO champion Lee is one of the few middleweights on the planet open to facing Golovkin and had indeed agreed to fight him in April 2014 only for the fight to fall through. It is assumed that he will still press on in his plans to return to the ring in 2017 as the Limerick man looks to jump back into title contention. With the WBC route closed off due to their intentions of staging a four-man World title eliminator contest (between David Lemieux, Jorge Sebastian Heiland, Ievgen Khytrov and Curtis Stevens) and with WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders unwilling to give Lee a rematch, it now looks as though the Castleconnell southpaw will look to target the WBA and IBF routes.
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Joe O’Neill and Gavan Casey look ahead to 2017 in episode 1 of The Irish Boxing Show
