Canelo Alvarez and Golden Boy to announce multi-fight deal with HBO

Canelo Alvarez will be back on HBO in December to face Joshua Clottey, which was reported last night, but for those wondering if this is a permanent move for Alvarez back to the network that first made him a star in the States, the answer is ... yes. Yes, it is.

Golden Boy will be announcing a "long-term commitment" at company headquarters this afternoon, with founder and President Oscar De La Hoya to be joined by Alvarez and HBO Sports President Ken Hershman.

Whatever issues HBO and Golden Boy had in 2013 that led to HBO announcing they would no longer air the company's fights is clearly done, as Bernard Hopkins returns in November for his fight with Sergey Kovalev, and Alvarez is coming back home, as it were, just a month later, with the latter, far younger star sticking with HBO for the long haul.

What this means for Showtime is kind of unclear, but the marriage between Showtime and Golden Boy, which came together when former Golden Boy lawyer Stephen Espinoza was named Hershman's replacement at the network, appears to be over. 2014 has been a very rocky year for Showtime after a strong 2013, which all kickstarted with Floyd Mayweather's record-making defection. But when Richard Schaefer was forced out at Golden Boy earlier this year, things went topsy-turvy.

Now, Showtime is left with Mayweather, of course, and fighters associated with Al Haymon, This isn't an outright bad thing, but Mayweather is 37 and has just two fights left on his contract, and Haymon has been getting away with murder at Showtime, with the murder victims being fans of competitive matchmaking.

As of now, Showtime has just two shows on the calendar for the rest of 2014, a pair of Leon Margules-promoted events on October 4 and November 1, neither of them anything special.

The tide has certainly turned, and what once seemed to be a likely long, grueling war now doesn't appear it will be a true battle for even two full years.