Gennadiy Golovkin and Ryota Murata were due to fight on Dec. 29 at the Saitama Super Arena in Japan on DAZN.
However the fight had to be postponed due to Japan reinstating strict border restrictions around the recent Omicron coronavirus variant.
Matchroom Boxing head Eddie Hearn is nearing toward a solution to finally staging the middleweight unification matchup between the IBF and IBO titlist Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KOs) and the WBA champion Murata (16-2, 13 KOs).
“Gennadiy Golovkin was to fight Murata in December. It looks like it’s going to be rescheduled for March or April,” Hearn told IFL.
Hearn did not say if the plan is for the fight to return to Japan, where Murata is a huge draw and star, and a locale of which Golovkin has long been wanting to headline.
Golovkin, who will turn 40-years-old in April, has fought just once since his Oct. 5, 2019 all-action slugfest against Sergiy Derevyanchenko – it came against undefeated mandatory challenger Kamil Szeremeta on Dec. 18, 2020.
The Kazakh KO artist scored four knockdowns against the undefeated mandatory Polish challenger Kamil Szeremeta en route to a seventh-round stoppage.
The 35-year-old Murata has been sidelined for much longer. Murata was last in the ring on Dec. 23, 2019, when he scored a fifth-round TKO against Steven Butler.
In the fight before that in July 2019, Murata avenged his October 2018 unanimous decision defeat to Rob Brant and reclaimed the 160-pound belt by stopping Brant via second-round TKO.
