BoxRec

Who wins ?

Lance Pugmire
‏@latimespugmire
The top 4 middleweights in that tourney could change but for now they are Heiland, Ievgen Khytrov, Curtis Stevens, David Lemieux.

I'm up for that....not exactly a fabulous four, but I think there'd be some entertaining fights

Can't really make a bad fight with those 4

Really like the look of that, Lemiex is a good fighter with heavy hands, Stevens similar if perhaps a slight level below
Heiland I remember beating Macklin who was stilly semi-relevant at the time, but he's went backwards since, so nice to see him in top action
And Khytrov is a prospect I've been waiting to see more of, so nice to see him reach that level of opposition

Plenty good potential matych ups.

Anyone know the format of the tournament? Just a semi-final - final type affair?

I assume a shot as GGG's mandatory in 2018 is the prize for the victor?

Lemieux, surely?
But i'd give Stevens an outside chance.

Lemieux for sure. Kyhtrov stinks.

If you look at the WBC's own rankings, it's difficult to figure out the logic they’ve used to determine the fighters competing in this four man tournament.

Going by their own rankings, why is Curtis Stevens preferred over the likes of Chris Eubank Jr., Andy Lee, Ryota Murata and Avtandil Khurtsidze? I guess with Andy Lee losing his most recent bout, I can understand, but what about the other guys?

Does anyone really have any appetite to see repeats of the one-sided beat-downs that Golovkin inflicted on David Lemieux and Curtis Stevens?

Why do we need a four-man WBC mandatory-challenger tournament in the first place? Hasn’t Jorge Sebastian Heiland been the WBC’s number one rated challenger for a very long time? Didn’t he gain the WBC’s mandatory challenger status when he defeated Matthew Macklin more than two years ago?

I’m confused.

As a boxing fan, I approve. Three solid match-ups, and the winner would be a very cut-and-dry top 5 middleweight. It kind of features a few too many of Golovkin's past victims, though. Ideally there would be at least 3 or 4 people that Golovkin has not fought before. Either way, this tournament doesn't do much to offer a credible threat to Golovkin (unless Khytrov wins), but it offers THREE objectively good match-ups. It should be appreciated for that alone. Not for whether it is capable of offering one measly title fight; it already does more than that.