Gennady Golovkin and Danny Jacobs have until Oct. 22 to continue negotiating for their anticipated middleweight showdown even though promoter Tom Loeffler asked for a purse bid to be ordered and the 30-day negotiating period will be up next Wednesday, according to WBA president Gilberto Mendoza, who offered both an interim fight before they meet.

Despite the request by Loeffler, who handles Golovkin, Mendoza and Loeffler ultimately agreed to let the process play out, Mendoza said. As a result, the camps have until next Wednesday before the 30-day negotiating period expires. At that point, they will have an additional 10 days to complete a deal before a purse bid is ultimately ordered, giving the sides another two more weeks, he said.

“We are going to wait until the 12^th (of October) to set the time and place for the bid if they don’t reach an agreement,” Mendoza said in a phone interview. “And they still have days (after the 12^th) because usually you have to give the parties 10 days to get prepared for the bid, so that will give the 10 extra days to negotiate.”

Furthermore, Jacobs’ side has requested the purse bid distribution be changed from 75-25 in favor of Golovkin to 60-40, given that Jacobs holds a secondary middleweight title and isn’t just a run-of-the-mill mandatory challenger. While the WBA has already ruled on whether to grant Jacobs’ his request, Mendoza declined to say publicly what it has decided, saying he will reveal the decision when the purse bid is ordered, which could take place in New York City or Miami, he said.

If it goes to purse bid, the sides have between 45 and 90 days to stage the fight, which could land on Dec. 10 in New York with Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center in Brooklyn the venues under consideration.

In the midst of the negotiations, Mendoza, acting as a mediator, offered both sides the chance to have an interim fight and put off Golovkin-Jacobs until the spring. However, Golovkin’s side vehemently declined, Mendoza said. “I was just trying to accommodate everyone’s interests,” Mendoza said. “But at the end of the day, that was not a final decision. It was just an idea. That’s not going to happen right now. That’s off the table.”

The fear is that either side could vacate their WBA title if a deal can’t be reached or if the fight is untenable for whatever reason. Mendoza said the topic of vacating a title hasn’t come up for either fighter. “We’re not talking about that,” he said. “Honestly, we’ll have to wait but GGG wants to be the middleweight champion and I don’t think he’d want to vacate any of his titles and I think that’s the same for Jacobs. This will establish the top middleweight.”

If the bout doesn’t happen because Jacobs (32-1, 29 knockouts) vacates the title, Mendoza would order interim titleholder Alfonso Blanco (12-0, 5 KOs) to face Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) as the mandatory. If the Kazakh knockout artist has to vacate the belt, the WBA could order Jacobs-Blanco.

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