Report: Canelo Alvarez, Gennadiy Golovkin Agree To Third Fight

With boxing’s future still uncertain, a major fight could be coming later this year.

According to a report from The Athletic, multi-time champion Canelo Alvarez and current IBF middleweight titleholder Gennadiy Golovkin have verbally agreed to financial terms for a third fight. There’s no set date or venue for the fight, but the report does say that AT&T Stadium in Texas is in play to host the bout with Mexican Independence Day weekend in mid-September being a possibility.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the two will fight immediately as boxing is currently undergoing a mass recess because of the coronavirus outbreak affecting countries all over the world. Alvarez, who holds both the WBA middleweight title and the WBA “Regular” super middleweight title, was set to fight WBO super middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders on May 2 in Las Vegas, but that is no longer in play.

The report would go on to say that the fight against Saunders is still possible and Alvarez hopes to have that fight next. But if the coronavirus outbreak forces boxing to take an extended break well into the summer, then there is a scenario where Alvarez would forgo the fight against Saunders and instead jump straight into the trilogy bout against Golovkin. There’s also a scenario where Alvarez faces Saunders and Golovkin faces mandatory challenger Kamil Szeremeta in the summer, but the coronavirus could impact the dates for the aforementioned fights.

Alvarez and Golovkin faced off in two high-profile fights on HBO pay-per-view shows in 2017 and 2018, both of which did at least one million buys. In the first encounter, the two battled to a controversial draw and a rematch was made the following year, with Alvarez coming out on top with a majority decision win.

After the rematch, both Alvarez and Golovkin would end up signing multi-year deals to fight on DAZN, making the third fight a possibility. Golovkin has only fought twice on DAZN with his most recent fight being a decision win against Sergiy Derevyanchenko in October 2019 to win the IBF middleweight title.

Alvarez’s time on DAZN has been filled with title bouts across three different weight classes. Alvarez won the WBA “Regular” super middleweight belt against Rocky Fielding in 2018, then unified middleweight belts against Daniel Jacobs and won the WBO light heavyweight title against Sergey Kovalev in 2019.