Canelo Alvarez to face Liam Smith on September 17

Canelo Alvarez will "move down" in weight to 154 pounds on September 17 to fight WBO titleholder Liam Smith, live on HBO pay-per-view. This is a fight that, it should go without saying, nobody has been asking to see, which stings doubly when you consider that Alvarez is one half of the fight everybody has been asking to see, against Gennady Golovkin.

Plans for Golovkin -- if they are real at all — involve a fight in the fall of 2017, but the skeptics are fully out now. Coming off of a win over Amir Khan in a fight that was hammered by media and fans and then turned out pretty much as expected, Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KO) against Golovkin (35-0, 32 KO) was the natural bout to make. But what should happen is not what often does in boxing, and it will be hard to convince anyone that this isn’t just another Mayweather-Pacquiao situation, with seemingly endless delays and bickering.

Golden Boy is speaking with Jerry Jones about putting Canelo-Smith at AT&T Stadium outside of Dallas, and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas has also been mentioned.

Smith (23-0-1, 13 KO) won his WBO belt last year against fringe contender John Thompson, and has followed with defenses against woefully overmatched Jimmy Kilrain Kelly and Predrag Radosevic. Taking a fight with Alvarez is a no-brainer for Smith and promoter Frank Warren, who have nothing to lose other than a belt, and those aren’t that hard to come by, as, well, Smith’s exact situation has proven.

Golovkin is said to be near a deal to go to London in September to fight Chris Eubank Jr.