Upon hearing the news of Murray’s denial, Golovkin reached out to WBN with his manager Oleg Hermann to reveal that the highly-rated fighter was, and remains their first choice for the hard-hitting Kazakh’s return later this year.
“My first choice was Murray,” Golovkin exclusively told World Boxing News today.
“My team have tried everything to get Martin for my next fight. This is boxing, though. If somebody doesn’t want to fight, you can not force them to fight me.”
Hermann, who has overseen Golovkin’s considerable rise in recent years, then added: “I can’t believe that he did not get any information from his team at Hatton Promotions,” said Hermann.
“Murray should really think of some new excuse as it’s now really boring what he is saying. If a fighter is not ready to fight, he should say I need more time or more fights.
“He should not try to find new excuses every day.
“We had the same story with Felix Sturm, Hassan N’Dam and Daniel Geale, plus some other fighters.
“We know if an opponent wants to fight Gennady, then the fight will happen. If the opponent doesn’t want this fight with GGG, you get new excuses every day.
“I want to say we respect fighters like Matthew Macklin, Gabriel Rosado, and Grzegorz Proksa as these guys took the challenge to fight with the best middleweight in the world,” he added.
Golovkin, 31, is set to make his next foray in the ring on November 2nd in the USA and has been linked to a fight with Curtis Stevens after the American made his own statement of intent against Saul Roman.
However, the talented Murray remains the number one target for Golovkin in what would be a huge 160lb clash – as the two-belt title holder builds up to a possible mega-fight with Sergio Martinez in 2014.
