Canelo Alvarez looks like he’s headed for the third fight with Gennadiy Golovkin in September, honoring an agreement that was already in place prior to Canelo’s loss to Dmitry Bivol on May 7.
“In the next few days we will announce the September fight. Surely, it will be against GGG because we already had that agreement, but I will also fight Bivol again,” Canelo told ESPN Knockout (via ESPN Ringside).
Canelo vs GGG 3 would take place at 168 lbs, where Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KO) is still the undisputed champion of the world. Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KO) holds two belts at middleweight right now, but has wanted this third fight with Canelo a long time, and at 40, really might be better off not having to cut an extra eight lbs to make weight anymore.
The trilogy bout is probably more interesting to a lot of people now than it was before Canelo lost at light heavyweight to Bivol. Golovkin fought on April 9 in Japan, starting a bit slow but ultimately stopping Ryota Murata to unify the IBF and WBA middleweight titles. He held up his end, and it was never required that Canelo beat Bivol, as it was in a different weight class to what Canelo-GGG 3 will be.
It is also, simply, a huge fight. Canelo and Golovkin did big numbers on pay-per-view in 2017 and 2018 in a pair of controversial results — one a draw, the second a narrow Alvarez victory — which were also terrific fights. GGG has wanted the third fight for years, but Canelo moved up to 168 briefly in 2018, three months after the second Golovkin bout, and then only did one more fight at 160 before dabbling at 175, fully unifying at 168, and trying out 175 again.
Golovkin has stayed at middleweight his entire career, which is incredible. He fought Steve Rolls at a 164 lb catchweight in 2019, but that was a stay-busy, tune-up kind of matchup, his first following the Canelo rematch.
Golovkin is 4-0 (3 KO) since the second fight in 2018, while Canelo has gone 7-1 (5 KO).
If Canelo wins the trilogy bout, it would definitely set up a big rematch with Bivol for, most likely, May 2023, as long as Bivol doesn’t lose before then, and surely he’ll want to fight again and not just sit for a year. But if Canelo loses to Golovkin, there will likely be no Bivol rematch right after for sure; he will be past the point of getting to exercise a contractual rematch clause, so he couldn’t just force it, and his stock will have taken a big hit.