Undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez and his nemesis Gennadiy Golovkin will be squaring off on September 17th for their trilogy in familiar territory at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
This is the same venue the two warriors have battled in the past, and recently beaten Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) has opted to take it back to this location, perhaps for good luck.
Boxing fans aren’t as excited to see Canelo and Golovkin fight again as they once were.
Canelo’s recent loss at the hands of WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol on May 7th has fans preferring to see a rematch, especially given that Alvarez said he wanted a second fight.
It’s believed that Canelo’s promoter Eddie Hearn persuaded him to take the fight with Golovkin next rather than wait until after rematching Bivol. That was a smart move by Hearn because Golovkin might not be able to keep winning much longer while waiting for Canelo.
Golovkin, 40, and DAZN have been waiting for four years for Canelo to pull the trigger on the trilogy match, and it’s good that he finally chose to take the match now.
If Canelo waited another year or two, Golovkin might get beaten, and that would wreck the interest that boxing fans still have in this old match-up.
The ideal time for the Canelo-Golovkin trilogy has long passed, as Golovkin has let his career slide waiting for the third match since losing to Alvarez in their rematch in 2018.
Golovkin stopped fighting high-caliber opposition after his loss to Canelo for four years, and he’s been in a holding pattern, waiting for the superstar to give him the lucrative trilogy match.
The negative drawback is that Golovkin’s popularity has dipped, and there’s not as much interest in the third clash as there would have been if Canelo had chosen to fight him in 2019.
In the first Canelo-Golovkin fight in 2017, the judges scored it a controversial 12-round draw in a match where many boxing fans had Golovkin winning 8-4 [116-112].
What was disturbing about that fight was that one judge scored it for Canelo 10-2, giving Golovkin only two rounds. To be off by that margin was shocking, giving some boxing fans the impression that Golovkin never stood a chance with the judging crew that worked the fight.
In the rematch in 2018, Canelo won a 12-round majority decision over Golovkin. Again, fans thought Golovkin was robbed, as Canelo gassed after six rounds and was fighting on fumes in the second half of the fight.
Since that fight, Canelo has focused on cleaning up the 168-lb division against the champions, a ragged mix of fighters that Alvarez easily beat.
