It was media duty for Gennady Golovkin yesterday, and though the former world middleweight king was asked a good deal of questions about his upcoming, October 5th fight – his “Big Drama Show” – with once-beaten Ukrainian warrior Sergiy Derevyanchenko, GGG was also peppered with plenty of questions about his most famous ring rival: Canelo Alvarez.
Golovkin, 39-1-1(35) told Ringtv.com that he and his team have “a plan B if Canelo doesn’t want the fight,” – as in the third fight, the deciding fight we all want, need, to see between GGG and Canelo. And Canelo recently stated how he basically has no interest in fighting Golovkin again (contradicting his promoter Oscar De La Hoya, who has just told The L.A Times how we would “definitely see Canelo and GGG fight in 2020.”)
Will a third fight happen between these two, who are tied up with one draw and one close win for Canelo, or not? “That’s really a question for Canelo,” Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler told Ring, adding “our position is that we won those two fights.”
Plenty of fans agree strongly with Loeffler (for what it’s worth, this one included) and this is why we want, need, that third installment of the rivalry. But GGG is seemingly quite content to move on if Canelo refuses to play ball. To where? Golovkin says he has “four or five different options.”
Amongst these options are fights with the likes of Demetrius Andrade, who holds the WBO middleweight title, Billy Joe Saunders, the reigning WBO champ at 168 pounds, and Callum Smith, in the opinion of most the current best in the world at super-middleweight. As interesting as these fights would be, neither match-up excites as much as a GGG-Canelo III gets the pulses racing.
Bottom line: GGG and Canelo owe the sport the third fight, as much as they owe it to themselves to settle their rivalry; to find out who really is the better fighter, once and for all.