Bernard Hopkins: Canelo Alvarez will stop Gennadiy Golovkin in third fight, “it will be a beat down”

Bernard Hopkins is no longer involved in promoting Canelo Alvarez, but he’s still clearly a big fan of the Mexican superstar, and is picking Canelo to stop Gennadiy Golovkin when those two rivals meet for a third time on Sept. 17.

“I think there’s going to be more blows coming from both sides. I’m picking Canelo by stoppage,” he told Little Giants Boxing. “I’m predicting Canelo will find his groove and then get a stoppage in the sixth or seventh round. It looks like it will be a beat down.”

It’s worth noting that although Hopkins is well-respected as an in-ring boxing mind and all that, his track record on this sort of thing isn’t perfect, just like any of us. He picked Canelo to “smash” Dmitry Bivol back in May, which, y’know, did not turn out to be the case, and he generally has picked against Golovkin, perhaps because GGG tied Hopkins’ record with 20 straight successful middleweight title defenses.

The trilogy bout between Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KO) and Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KO) will be at 168 lbs, for the Mexican’s undisputed championship, meaning the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO belts. They first met in 2017, going to a disputed draw, and then met again in 2018, a disputed majority decision win for Alvarez.

Canelo is now 32, but he’s coming off of a pretty humbling defeat, where he was thoroughly out-boxed by major underdog Bivol at 175 lbs, while Golovkin is 40 and has fought just once since 2020, an April stoppage win over Ryota Murata in Japan.

The best news for all of us is that after a summer that has been a desert for actual big fights, we’re just over five weeks away from this one, and it is going to be a very big fight.