By Roy Billington

The most devastating middleweight in the world, Gennady Golovkin has his eyes set on an April 23rd return to the ring. The hard-hitting Kazakhstani, Golovkin, has reserved the illustrious Madison Square Garden for his first fight of 2016 and he has began preparations for a mandatory defense against Tureano Johnson, but GGG’s path to Madison Square Garden has an unexpected obstacle in the form of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The sport of Mixed Martial Arts’ relationship with New York has been a complexed affair. Following a ban on MMA in New York, which was signed in by the then Governor George E. Pataki, the UFC has fought to have the sport legalized and to hold a tentpole event in Madison Square Garden and thanks to a new legal push, the UFC could be within touching distance of doing it.

While the UFC is seen as a leading sports organisation now, there were some legitimate concerns about  MMA’s early incarnations. Unregulated bouts with huge weight disparities lead to Senator John McCain labelling the sport as “human cockfighting”, but in the years following 1997, the UFC has pioneered the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts and the sport has become one of the most regulated sports and is legal in all but one state, New York.

The fact that the UFC has paid a non-refundable $25,000 deposit for the venue on April 23rd shows obvious optimism for the promotion, who have long held dreams of hosting a show in the iconic arena, but the reality of a fight card for the UFC in the garden seems far away.

With the news that Gennady Golovkin has too booked the Garden for that night, one must begin to speculate if the UFC is on the cusp of another legal rejection. The UFC argues that the New York ban is unconstitutional and that the fact that other combat sports such as boxing, karate and kickboxing are all legal in the State just illustrates the hypocrisy at play.

Another reason that the UFC still faces opposition in New York could be from governmental lobbying by the Culinary Union. The UFC’s owners, Frank and Lorenzo Ferrtita, are also owners of the non-unionized Station Casinos and have been at loggerheads with the Culinary Union for over a decade about the Union’s wish to have the Station Casinos’ staff join them.

April 23rd is a little over 3 months away and the fact that the event hasn’t been legally backed is worrying for the UFC. For the UFC event to go ahead the promotion must be successful in a preliminary injunction and then have the MMA law passed by April 23rd which seems like an unrealistic time frame. It is believed if they lose out on the Garden the UFC will look to host their April 23rd show at the Honda Center, in Anaheim, California.


2016 could well be the year that Gennady Glolovkin truly penetrates the mainstream psyche. GGG has long been the boxing addict’s favorite fix for violence, but he has yet to garner the acclaim he deserves amongst the general public. Over the course of 2015, Golovkin scored 3 beautiful knockouts and earned a spot at number 2 in the pound-for-pound rankings.

If the UFC is unable to get Madison Square Garden, Glolovkin will likely have a handy night’s work for himself against Tureano Johnson, who albeit powerful, lacks the technical nuance to match the vastly more experienced Golovkin. The relatively inexperienced Johnson has very little to offer Golovkin, but he would act as some needed warm-up as GGG prepares to take on some of the biggest names in the sport in 2016.

If Golovkin can get past Johnson, which many expect him to, the Kazakhstani will likely face Billy Joe Saunders in a title unification fight. Billy Joe Saunders and GGG’s team are due to begin talks next week to see if they can put together a fight between the pair. A fight between Billy Joe Saunders and GGG would be huge for the sport and could parlay into a super fight against the other middleweight champion, Saul Canelo Alvarez.

Regardless of who wins the right to fight at the Garden, fight fans hold out hope that the UFC will one day be regulated in  New York.