Gennadiy Golovkin slated to return on June 6 against Kamil Szeremeta

Nothing is certain with anything on the boxing or sports schedule at this point, but Gennadiy Golovkin is tentatively slated to return to action on June 6, when he will defend his IBF middleweight title against mandatory challenger Kamil Szeremeta, according to ESPN.com.

The fight will take place at The Forum in Inglewood, California, and will of course stream live on DAZN, where Golovkin is contracted.

Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KO) won two fights last year, obliterating Steve Rolls in a catchweight tune-up on June 8 at Madison Square Garden, then winning a highly competitive decision over Sergiy Derevyanchenko on Oct. 5 to claim the vacant IBF belt.

The decision in October was booed a bit, even at Madison Square Garden, where Golovkin has been a star and fan favorite for a while now. He’ll switch coasts for his next outing after two straight at MSG. GGG will turn 38 in early April, ahead of this next fight.

The 30-year-old Szeremeta (21-0, 5 KO) is a Polish fighter and former European champion who gave up that belt to pursue the IBF shot. He went 3-0 last year, beating Andrew Francillette in France in a final EBU title defense, then went back home for a July win over club fighter Edwin Palacios, and made his U.S. debut on the GGG-Derevyanchenko card in October, smashing overmatched Oscar Cortes inside of two rounds.

Szeremeta is a competent, solid boxer at the European level, but will be an enormous underdog against Golovkin. Seemingly, there’s really nothing Szeremeta does well enough that he figures to give GGG problems. On paper, he’s exactly the sort of guy Golovkin chewed up for years and built his name on while top fighters largely avoided facing him. But it’s a mandatory, it has to be done, and you never truly know until you fight the fight.

GGG-Szeremeta previously had tentative dates in late February and late March, and was then expected to happen in April or May.