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    Dan RafaelESPN Senior Writer

Two Golden Boy Promotions contenders, junior welterweight Lucas Matthysse and middleweight Tureano Johnson, are on the mend and aiming for ring returns in 2017.

Matthysse (37-4, 34 KOs), of Argentina, one of boxing’s fiercest punchers, has not fought since suffering a damaged eye and broken orbital bone in a 10th-round knockout loss to Viktor Postol in a fight for a vacant junior welterweight world title in October 2015.

Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez told ESPN that Matthysse, 34, who considered retirement after the injury, would likely return to the ring in March or April.

“He’s started training again,” Gomez said. “He’s been very, very careful with things because of the injury. He wants to make sure he is 100 percent, and when Matthysse trains he is always nonstop. He always likes to stay active but he just needs to take it slowly. So he is getting back into it but hasn’t started to spar yet.

“What (Argentine co-promoter) Mario Arano is telling me is that come March, Lucas will be ready to fight, so we’re going to go ahead and start working on that for him. But when he comes back, Matthysse wants to come back at welterweight. He wants to fight at 147 pounds, so he is moving up (from 140 pounds).”

Johnson (19-1, 13 KOs), of the Bahamas, has not boxed since October 2015, when he easily outpointed Eamonn O’Kane in a world title elimination fight on the undercard of the Gennady Golovkin-David Lemieux middleweight unification bout. The victory against O’Kane made Johnson a mandatory challenger for Golovkin, who knocked out Lemieux.

Johnson, 31, was the likely candidate to face GGG last April 23 but had to pass on the fight because he injured his right rotator cuff during the fight with O’Kane. Johnson, who has won five fights in a row since a 10th-round knockout loss to former world title challenger Curtis Stevens in 2014, eventually had surgery to repair the injury and has been out since.

Gomez said that Johnson should be ready to fight in January.

“He’s been rehabbing the shoulder and he has started training lightly, and he feels good,” Gomez said. “He’s able to use his arm. I don’t think he’s sparred yet, but he’s been hitting the heavy bag and feeling good. We’re looking for a January or February comeback for him.

“We’ll get him a tuneup fight to knock off the rust and then we’ll look for that mandatory fight. He’s still in position. So we’ll get him a comeback fight and after that, depending on how he looks and feels, we’ll look to evaluate his performance and see if he’s ready to take on that mandatory position for GGG.”