Canelo Alvarez: No deal agreed yet for Bivol and Golovkin, negotiations continue

With earlier reports that Canelo Alvarez has agreed to the terms of a two-fight deal with Matchroom Boxing and DAZN, Canelo himself took to social media to deny the report, saying he is “still negotiating” and that “there’s nothing concrete.”

ESPN’s story is still up, for what it’s worth, and you have to keep in mind this could really just be Canelo looking to control the release of big news, which would understandable on his end. Think back just recently, when ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Tom Brady had made up his mind to retire, then Brady’s team made a big stink that no, he hadn’t, and then, you know, Tom Brady shortly after announced his retirement.

So unless Canelo actually winds up doing something else — PBC reportedly have a big deal on offer to fight Jermall Charlo and David Benavidez instead of the Dmitry Bivol/Gennadiy Golovkin deal with DAZN — this would still be the news, except that Canelo may get to drop the official announcement on his social media pages along with DAZN and Matchroom.

But Mike Coppinger, who reported the story, did make note that the DAZN deal was not over the finish line, too, so don’t count PBC out just yet. Coppinger noted that the issue wasn’t with Canelo or Dmitry Bivol (who has signed to face Canelo on May 7), but with issues on Gennadiy Golovkin’s end. Golovkin would be Canelo’s September opponent under the terms of the deal.

We know very well that Canelo and Golovkin don’t have one of those boxing rivalries that turned into a friendship. If Canelo feels like GGG is being annoying, Canelo could tell DAZN and Matchroom to forget it and bounce over to the PBC deal.

Alvarez generally doesn’t fiddle around with drawn-out negotiations anymore — to be blunt about it, he doesn’t seem to tolerate not getting his way, getting things done when he wants them done. There’s a reason the Ilunga Junior Makabu idea was abandoned and that fight never got back into the discussion. Makabu is probably in fine shape to fight Canelo on May 7, but when that became more of a headache than Canelo felt like dealing with, he ditched it. He didn’t even care what happened in Makabu’s rematch with Thabiso Mchunu, which got done in plenty of time to allow the May 7 date to go through.

So we’ll see. The bottom line is there are two deals out there that are known: DAZN/Matchroom for Bivol and Golovkin, and PBC for Charlo and Benavidez. As a boxing fan, I honestly don’t think there’s a bad outcome here. All four fights sound good to me.