Gennadiy Golovkin vs. Ryota Murata fight prediction, undercard, odds, start time, live stream, expert pick

The middleweight champion looks to unify in Japan on Saturday in a fight with interesting implications

While every fighter has reason to want to win every fight, Gennadiy Golovkin enters Saturday's bout with Ryota Murata with millions upon millions more reasons than most. As long as Golovkin can beat Murata and unify the IBF and WBA middleweight championships, he's set for a massive trilogy bout with Canelo Alvarez to end the year. That, of course, assumes that Alvarez is also able to beat Dmitry Bivol on May 7. Gennadiy Golovkin (c) -490 Ryota Murata (c) +370 WBA & IBF middleweight titles Shuichiro Yoshino -175 Masayuki Ito +150 Lightweight Junto Nakatani (c) -2000 Ryota Yamauchi +1000 WBO flyweight title Kazuki Anaguchi Ryuji Yamamoto Super bantamweight Hiroka Amaki Taiga Kato Welterweight

Murata is far from a pushover and should not be treated as a mere bump in the road en route to Golovkin vs. Alvarez 3. Also, Murata has the home-ring advantage, with the fight taking place from Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan (5:10 a.m. ET, DAZN).

In 18 professional fights, Murata has suffered two losses, though he decisively avenged both. Murata lost a fight for the WBA regular title, a secondary belt for the sanctioning body, to Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam in May 2017. That October, Murata avenged that split decision by forcing N'Jikam's corner to throw in the towel after seven rounds.