When did the middleweight division’s weight limit for challengers become 147 pounds?

It didn’t unless you are allegedly the two best middleweights in the world. Then you can fight 140-pounders or 147-pounders and not only get away with it, you get praise for it. If there is any logic to this, please let me know.

This is what both Saul“Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin recently have done while successfully avoiding the one middleweight fight the world would like to see — a fight between the two of them. This may make business sense but it makes no common sense. At least not if you want to call yourself a fighter.

When Alvarez knocked former junior welterweight champion AmirKhan cold with one punch in the sixth round in April, he had successfully defended the “middleweight” title he had won from Miguel Cotto despite insisting they not exceed 155 pounds in a 160-pound division.

Alvarez put the same restrictions on Khan, but it didn’t matter because the only way Khan weighs 160 is with 10 rolls of quarters in each pocket. After cold-cocking the Brit, Alvarez went through an elaborate charade of calling Golovkin, who is the unified but not universally acclaimed middleweight belt holder, into the ring and menacingly suggested he would be next.

Two weeks later, Alvarez relinquished the WBC middleweight title rather than face Golovkin, his mandatory challenger. So much for calling out Golovkin.

The two continue to insist they will one day face each other but Alvarez contends he’s not yet a middleweight and needs a fight or two to grow into the division. One might find that more acceptable if he hadn’t then signed to face WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith in September. If you’re preparing to fight the middleweight champion, shouldn’t your tuneup be with a middleweight?

That wasn’t as bad as Golovkin, though. He totally skipped over the 154-pounders and dipped into the welterweight ranks to find a challenger, undefeated IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook. That Sept. 10 fight sold out the O2 Arena in London in a matter of hours, despite the fact Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) has knocked out his last 22 opponents. Now he’s facing Brook (36-0, 25 KOs), who has never fought at anywhere near 160.

The justification? “He’s a big welterweight,” Golovkin’s apologists said.

Doesn’t that mean he’s a welterweight?

It is one thing not to want to fight each other. It’s quite another to claim to be middleweights when you don’t want to fight middleweights any more.

“Just a couple days ago, my promoter, Tom Loeffler, called me and said, Kell Brook wants to fight me,” Golovkin said recently in New York. “This is big news for me. Kell Brook is the best in his division and a big test for me. It will be a great show for everybody watching on TV or in the arena.”

Tell that to Chris Eubank Jr., a true middleweight who wanted to get paid to fight the best one in the world and was negotiating to do so when suddenly the deal collapsed and his underweight stablemate got the gig. What he’s also going to get is a pounding from a bigger man, same as Khan got from Alvarez.

The best we can hope for is that Golovkin doesn’t then call Alvarez into the ring and promise to fight him next. That would probably lead to them both facing flyweights next.

A Saturday slugfest

Saturday night, what is likely to be one of the year’s most entertaining fights will be contested between WBA featherweight champion Leo Santa Cruz and undefeated former unified super bantamweight champion Carl Frampton (22-0, 14 KOs) at the Barclays Center. Both the champion and the challenger throw a lot of punches and land a lot of punches.

According to CompuBox statistics, Santa Cruz (32-0-1, 18 KOs) ranks second only to RomanGonzalez in the number of power punches landed per round. Santa Cruz also has taken over for Floyd Mayweather Jr. in what one could argue is boxing’s most critical statistic: the hit/miss category arrived at by subtracting opponents’ connect percentage from a fighter’s connect percentage. Santa Cruz is plus-15.8 percent, exceeding pound-for-pound list regulars Andre Ward (plus-15.3) and Golovkin (plus-15.2).

Frampton will counter the attacking nature of Santa Cruz with the ability to avoid the kind of attack that has made Santa Cruz a crowd pleaser. In his last six fights, Frampton’s opponents landed just 29.2 percent of their power punches while Santa Cruz has landed 46.9 percent of his power shots in his last eight fights. Clearly something will have to give here. The question is where?

“We’re expecting a very tough fight with a lot of action,” Frampton said. “The last time I was an underdog was the Irish championships, when I was an amateur. You could have got me at 11-to-2. I was a massive underdog. I dropped (his opponent) pretty early on.”

While Santa Cruz is the favorite, Frampton will bring to Barclays Center something too seldom seen these days in championship fights. He will bring a challenge. That’s all a fight fan can ask for and Saturday night they should get one.

Sheridan just grand

Boston native “Colonel” BobSheridan is having quite a year.

The Colonel has done the blow-by-blow broadcast of more than 10,000 fights and last month literally talked his way into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Last night, he added to his swelling resume when he handled the international broadcast of the Terence Crawford-Viktor Postol title fight in Las Vegas.

Sheridan, who often works alone on international fight telecasts, called not only the main event but also the semi-main, a world title fight between featherweight champion Oscar Valdez and Matias Adrian Rueda. It marked the 1,000th title fight for Sheridan, meaning for him it overshadowed the main event, which has now gone down as No. 1,001.

It was 48 years ago that Sheridan called his first title fight, Jimmy Ellis’ 15-round decision over Jerry Quarry for the WBA heavyweight championship. Since then, the Colonel has done nearly all the major title fights over the past five decades and is a broadcasting legend in nearly every corner of the globe except the United States.

“I can’t walk the streets in Bangkok,” he once joked.

If you want to hear a master at work, go find his blow-by-blow of Buster Douglas’ 1990 upset victory over Mike Tyson. It was a symphony of fistic drama orchestrated by The Colonel.

Short jabs

During a phone conversation announcing his second fight in the 175-pound weight class, former super middleweight champion Ward (29-0, 15 KOs) promised his Aug. 6 HBO bout against little known, 39-year-old super middleweight Alexander Brand would not become a trap for him as he marks time before an expected fall showdown with light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalov.

“It would really suck to have that mindset; be up and down based upon who the opponent is,” Ward said. “Whether it’s a tune-up fight or contender or a champion, I’ve always had the mindset to go prepared. I know it sounds cliche, but that’s just how I’m wired.” . . .

“ShoBox: The Next Generation” had its 15th anniversary Friday night when undefeated super bantamweight contender Adam Lopez (15-0-1, 7 KOs) fought to a draw vs. Roman Ruben Reynoso (18-1-2, 7 KOs) in the 10-round main event. During the series’ 15 years, 67 fighters who appeared on the series went on to win a world championship and 75 more fought for one. Showtime has telecast 484 fights during the series. . . .

As expected, former Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is back in boxing. Almost. Last week, Schaefer received a promotional license in Nevada. It has been two years since Schaefer left GBP amid law suits and countersuits. The two sides eventually settled and Schaefer sat on the sidelines until recently, when he became licensed in New York, California and Texas. Now he’s added Nevada but has not yet signed any fighters nor does he have a card yet arranged. It seems it won’t be long before the man who helped Oscar De La Hoya found GBP returns as his former partner’s promotional rival. . . .

Manny Pacquiao returns to the ring Nov. 5 in Las Vegas. Although he is 37, Pacquiao (58-6-2, 38 KOs) won a solid decision over Timothy Bradley Jr. April 9 in their rubber match. Maybe Pacquiao is coming back because his promoter, Bob Arum, claims he lost a wad on that fight when pay-per-view numbers were lackluster. Shortly thereafter, Pacquiao announced his retirement to pursue his political career in the Philippines. He was elected to the country’s senate, but apparently the duties give him enough free time to properly train. Who he’ll fight has yet to be decided. . . .

Ever wonder what happened to Mikey Garcia? The ex-featherweight and junior lightweight champion has not fought in 21⁄2 years, unless you consider his fight with Arum. But he’ll finally return to the ring Saturday vs. former featherweight champion Elio Rojas on the the Santa Cruz-Frampton undercard at Barclays Center. . . .

Former Oakland Raiders coach, TV analyst and video game mogul John Madden has long been a boxing fan and so is his son. A real estate developer by trade, Mike Madden wisely has chosen to indulge his boxing jones not by managing fighters but rather managing Muhammad Ali’s famous Deer Lake, Pa., training camp. The younger Madden bought it from martial arts instructor George Dillman.

“It’s sinking in,” Dillman recently said of the sale. “I’ll be heartbroken, but it’s time to move on.”

It is believed Madden will try to preserve the historic, rustic 18 log cabins Ali used to sleep and train in. Ali trained there for bouts with Joe Frazier and George Foreman, among many others.