Daniel Geale Targets Sturm, Murray as Backups if Pirog Fight Falls Through

With the news yesterday that the WBO has not signed off on letting their middleweight titleholder Dmitry Pirog face IBF titlist Daniel Geale in a much talked-about unification bout later this year, Australia's Geale says he's not sweating the Pirog fight, and has good options otherwise if that fight falls through.

"We've had some pretty good offers from Felix Sturm, to go over and fight for the WBA and IBF unification in September. There is also another offer through Ricky Hatton's camp that (Britain's) Martin Murray wants me to go over there and fight and we're considering it."

Whether or not the offers are serious or substantial is another matter, but hey, there's a couple of good names. Sturm vs Geale would be good, another title unification, but this isn't a case where Sturm says he's made a good offer, it's a case where the other guy's saying it. Murray would also be a fine challenger, and it would be a good step up from the likes of Osumanu Adama and Eromosele Albert, who have been easy home defenses for Geale.

One way or another, it would be nice if we could get some top ten-type middleweights fighting each other more often. All of these guys are in their prime years or maybe a bit past it -- it's not like we're protecting prospects making these easy fights, and only a couple of them are any type of legitimate draw, anyway.

If any division has the makeup to be a true "sporting" division, where we can find out who the best guys are by actually seeing them fight each other, it should be one like this, where the promoters of the top guys don't really have issues, and the biggest roadblocks are simply location, which is not the hardest thing to work out.

Hopefully something more comes of this than all of these guys facing more mediocre opponents.