Gennady Golovkin
Gennady Golovkin has earned a reputation as one of the most feared fighters in boxing. [Reuters]

WBA and IBO middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin has confirmed that Martin Murray remains his preferred choice as he looks to find an opponent for his next fight on 2 November.

Earlier this week it was suggested that an offer had been made to the Murray camp but the two-time world title challenger claimed yesterday that that was not the case.

Golovkin has now responded to Murray's denial and, while he remains keen to face the British fighter, made it clear that his team will look elsewhere for an opponent if necessary.

"My first choice was Murray," Golvkin told World Boxing News. "My team have tried everything to get Martin for my next fight. This is boxing though and if somebody doesn't want to fight you can't force them to fight me."

The Kazakh fighter has been largely avoided throughout his professional career due to his savage knockout ratio which is currently the best of any world champion in any weight class at nearly 89%.

Golovkin's manager Oleg Hermann has traditionally faced difficulties finding opponents but he is keen to try and negotiate with Murray.

"I can't believe that he did not get any information from his team at Hatton Promotions," said Hermann. "Murray should really think of some new excuses as it's now really boring what he is saying.

"If a fighter is not ready to fight, he should say I need more time, or more fights and not try to find new excuses every day. We had the same story with Felix Sturn, Hassan N'Dam and Daniel Geale, plus some other fighters.

"We know if an opponent wants to fight Gennady then the fight will happen and if an opponent doesn't want this fight with GGG you get new excuses.

"I want to say we respect fighters like Matthew Macklin, Gabriel Rosado and Gregorz Proksa as these guys took the challenge to fight with the best middleweight in the world."

Golovkin will be looking to build on his impressive stoppage of Macklin back in June and could now turn his attention to American Curtis Stevens who delivered a brutal first round knockout of Saul Roman last weekend.