Canelo vs Golovkin 3 possible for 2021 with both fighters interested

Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin engaged in two terrific fights in 2017 and 2018, with the first going to a disputed draw and the second a controversial win for Alvarez.

Since then, Alvarez has largely sort of brushed off calls for a third bout between the two, feeling he’s won against Golovkin and done all there is he needs to do there. But things can change fast in boxing; Canelo’s stance on the matter has seemed to thaw a bit over the months, and Golden Boy’s Eric Gomez tells Sky Sports there have been preliminary talks about Canelo-GGG 3 in 2021, with both sides interested.

“We have had some discussions about doing the third fight with Golovkin, which would be very exciting. [Alvarez] is willing to entertain that third fight. Hopefully we can surprise everybody by getting that fight going next year. They both realise now that their events were very successful. For them, monetarily, it would be very beneficial to fight again. More than anything, the fans are very interested. Both fights were very close and exciting. They both realise that now. They are both open to the fight.”

Perhaps now more than even in recent months, Alvarez, who turns 30 in six days, understands Golovkin is by far the biggest fight available for him, and with boxing struggling to get its footing back from the coronavirus pandemic, it would be logical to do as big a fight as possible, as soon as possible.

We already know that Alvarez (53-1-2, 36 KO) is going to have to take a pretty large pay cut to fight in September and not sit on the sidelines for all of 2020, and he’s reportedly OK with that, understanding the situation. Oscar De La Hoya has kept waiting to see if it would be possible to do a Canelo fight on Sept. 12 with some amount of fans in attendance, but it’s become increasingly clear that this is simply not going to happen. If Alvarez is to fight in two months’ time, he will be fighting without fans, meaning no live gate revenue.

And that September fight definitely won’t be with Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KO), who is planning to make his IBF middleweight mandatory title defense against Kamil Szeremeta. But if he wins that as expected, and Canelo wins in September, then a 2021 trilogy fight might be on the table. We know very well that DAZN want it, or else they wouldn’t have spent so much money singing both Canelo and GGG.

Alvarez is currently three fights into his 11-fight contract with the streaming service, and it’s fair to say he’s lacked a true blockbuster, though his bouts with Daniel Jacobs and Sergey Kovalev were certainly big. Golovkin is two fights into his six-bout agreement, having faced Steve Rolls in a tune-up and Sergiy Derevyanchenko in a really good fight that nonetheless didn’t move the needle a whole lot.

To even hope to see a true return on investment, DAZN needs these guys to fight one another. They’ve pushed hard for it, and the audience is definitely still there for it, even if it has to happen at super middleweight, or at the least a catchweight limit between 160 and 168, as it’s unlikely Canelo will boil back down to 160, and as the clear A-side, will have no reason to concede that if he doesn’t want to do so.

It’s all a waiting game of course, with so much unknown about what the landscape will look like in the coming months and, yes, into 2021. But at the very least it sounds like both sides are willing to put on this big fight if things line up.