Gennady Golovkin-Daniel Jacobs middleweight title bout ordered by WBA

With Gennady Golovkin and Danny Jacobs both earning victories over the weekend, the path has been cleared for the middleweights to meet later this year.

The WBA on Monday ordered Jacobs, who owns the organization's "regular" title and GGG, the unified 160-pound champion, to fight within the next 120 days.

They have 30 days to negotiate a deal, and if one cannot be consummated, it will go to a purse bid. Of course, politics will make the matchup hard to finalize, though both fighters say they want it.

The 34-year-old Kazakh has an exclusive contract with HBO, the network that televised his fifth-round TKO of Kell Brook on Saturday.

Jacobs, 29, is advised by Al Haymon, whose fighters compete under the Premier Boxing Champions series and also on Showtime.

As Paste BN Sports reporter last week, HBO has a date reserved for GGG to return in 2016. But will Haymon cooperate to bring the fight to HBO?

Though once banned by the network, Haymon fighters like Dominic Wade and Amir Khan have appeared on HBO this year.

Hopefully, politics don't block this fight which would pit two big-punching middleweights in what would surely be each man's toughest test to date.

"I want to prove to the world that I'm the best middleweight," Jacobs said after stopping Sergio Mora on Friday. "If GGG gets the victory (over Kell Brook), that's who we want."

It's the fight fans want to see, too.

(AP Photo/Rich Schultz, File)