The WBA middleweight title has been officially relinquished by Gennadiy Golovkin.
This happened only four days prior to the scheduled purse bid on March 13th, 2023, which aimed to determine the promotional rights for his title consolidation fight against Erislandy Lara.
“Mr Golovkin has requested that I contact you in order to communicate his intentions moving forward. Gennadiy Golovkin is proud to have reigned as the WBA Super Champion and to have unified the Middleweight titles in Japan against Ryoto Murata last year. Gennadiy thanks the WBA for its support during that process and during his career,’ John Hornewer (Golovkin’s attorney).
Lara has now been declared the WBA middleweight champion, resulting in the permanent removal of the ‘Super’ and ‘Regular’ titles from the sanctioning body’s ongoing campaign to reduce the number of titles.
BOXING NEWS!:
Instagram: GoodfellaSports
2x champion Gennadiy Golovkin has vacated his WBA middleweight title rather than defending it against his mandatory challenger Erislandy Lara, now means the Cuban star is the sole champion with the sanctioning body at 160.#boxing pic.twitter.com/N2lUqc8fcz
— GOODFELLA SPORTS.š„ (@gfsports92) March 10, 2023
In addition, Golovkin (42-2-1, 37KOs) vacated his IBF middleweight title on February 8th, 2023, as he was required to defend it against Esquiva Falcao.
Last autumn, Golovkin had gone up a weight class to super middleweight to face Canelo Alvarez in their long-awaited third bout.
Despite losing the fight, Golovkin stated that he had no intentions of retiring and would go back down to middleweight to defend his title.
But after having turned down his mandatories, there are question marks over how long he has left in the sport.