Sergio Martinez says he won't avoid Gennady Golovkin in 2014

According to promoter Lou DiBella, reigning WBC titlist and true middleweight champion Sergio Martinez has reached out to tell his team that he's got no problem fighting Gennady Golovkin next year, though DiBella wisely says that it won't be the first fight back for Sergio, who is currently recovering from several injuries suffered over his last two fights.

Martinez (51-2-2, 28 KO) is not expected to fight again until spring 2014, and Golovkin (27-0, 24 KO) could fight three or even four more times by the point they might meet next year. DiBella says that Martinez doesn't want to be seen as someone who avoided the challenge in front of him:

"He said that history will show that he has embraced every challenge available to him in his career. His legacy will be that he was always willing to fight the best. Right now, his concentration is on healing and rehabilitation and he will not fight until sometime in the first half of 2014. He wanted to make it clear that he is willing to fight Gennady Golovkin in the future. Any conversations now about timing would be premature and inappropriate," DiBella told BoxingScene.com.

DiBella, who hyped his other middleweight Matthew Macklin as a major challenge for Golovkin this past weekend, says that Martinez will beat Golovkin if and when he's 100% again. But that's all promoter talk -- DiBella is fully aware, as we all are, the risks in an aging, seemingly injury-prone Martinez facing Golovkin, and if Sergio ends up taking that fight next year (with Golovkin, we assume, staying on this kind of roll), then that deserves all the respect in the world. Martinez is a man's man in that case.