Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin vs. Vanes Norikovich Martirosyan

The official commemorative WBC "rainbow" belt, awaiting the victor on May 5th:

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(Bats'il Ajaw is Yucatán Mayan for "True Hero")

 

He was mandatory for a good chunk of it, and kept being ordered to jump through hoops, including Lara I & II.

Williams and Ortiz would have been leapfrogging Martirosyan had Canelo fought them.

 

Avtandil was arrested in the US and is being prosecuted under the RICO Act (big time racketeering, usually with very stiff penalties imposed, extra long jail sentences compared to similar crimes without the RICO statute) for crimes in the New York City area.

It was the NYC branch of the Russian/Georgian mob that he was busted for being a part of.

 

The precise monthly rankings are not really conveniently indexed anywhere, either of us could pore through as many as we could from the hodgepodge of sites that have re-posted them as snapshots-in-time over the years to cobble together a complete picture, but suffice to say you may well be right that I'm remembering incorrectly that he was mando - but a) he did in that period over two years go from beating Saúl Román in what the WBC sanctioned as being a semifinal eliminator, to picking up the Silver belt, to drawing with Lara in a #1 vs. #2 final eliminator...and yet, after jumping through all these hoops, neither Martirosyan nor Lara ever got a crack at Canelo's 154lb green belt while he wore it (Canelo fought Lara much later, in 2014, after having unified his belt with the WBA from Austin Trout and then losing both to Mayweather) - and Canelo publicly flaunted the fact that he was planning on ignoring his mandatory (be it Marirosyan or Lara, before they fought) in late 2012 in favor of a Cotto, Mayweather or Maravilla superfight.

Fact is, the whole time Canelo held that green belt, Martirosyan was a) high in the WBC rankings, if not at the very summit beside the man he drew with and versus whom Canelo would later get a gift, b) still himself undefeated (losing to Andrade two months after Canelo's own cherry was popped against PBF) and with a high US television profile and renowned amateur pedigree, and c) extremely vocal about wanting the fight, even stating his willingness to accept it for a substantially financial short end of the stick compared with most top contenders.

 

I've never heard of a guy being given a regular furlough to attend training camp and then fight professionally.

 

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Nothing says Mexican style like ¡Magníficos arcoíris luminosos!

 

Landing a sweet body shot on Rated-R, in what many have forgotten was a step up in class, stern test, and star-making performance for him.

Thanks. @Drew101 picked it out for me. (per terms of the bet we had on Hurd vs. Lara, which I lost)

(I don't hate Bradley or anything, quite the opposite; the nefarious coup de grâce in this selection is that Bradley was rocking the Montreal Canadiens' logo across his waistband that night; Drew is a Hab, bitter hockey rivals of my hometown Bruins)