It’s the biggest fight of the year, no doubt, and already fight fans everywhere are talking about the September 16 showdown between middleweight king Gennady Golovkin and star challenger Canelo Alvarez. And there are plenty of things to talk about with this mega-fight.
Aside from discussing who will win the big fight, fans are currently mulling over the following things:
The fight will not be fought at a catch-weight.
This is great news, and nothing else should really have been expected. The fight will contest the world middleweight crown and therefore the fight being fought at 160 pounds is no shocker, but in light of the high number of catch-weight fights we’ve seen recently, many fans were worried there might be one in place for GGG-Canelo. Thankfully this will not be the case. So, who will be the bigger, stronger man in the ring on fight night?
Canelo will have a rematch clause, Golovkin will not.
This one did raise a few eyebrows. As reported by The Los Angeles Times, Canelo will be able to get himself an immediate return fight should he lose in September, while “Golovkin will not have this luxury,” (as quoted by The LA Times). This, quite basically, does not seem fair. At all.
Should GGG lose, say via a close, close, close, debatable decision defeat, how much will he be regretting how he agreed to this particular clause in the contract? Still, the fact that the world middleweight ruler has agreed to such an unbalanced deal shows you exactly how much he wants this fight.
The venue is still undecided.
Just where will the showdown take place? Promoter Oscar De La Hoya has mentioned places such as Wembley, England, Dubai and Las Vegas as possibilities. While Vegas seems a natural venue, maybe Oscar and Co and shooting for a far bigger venue than Vegas can offer – Wembley, with its 90,000 capacity, for example. Or maybe the cavernous Dallas Cowboys Stadium will play host to the fight the entire boxing word will be watching.
De La Hoya says that when his man wins, Canelo will become Pound-for-Pound NO.1.
The September 16 winner will be looked at by many millions of fans as the best fighter on the planet; or one of them anyway. But Oscar, backing Canelo to the hilt of course, told ESPN that his fighter will take the mythical P-4-P spot should he emerge victorious in a little over four months’ time. Fans and supporters of fighters such as Vasyl Lomachenko and the Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev rematch will possibly disagree, but it’s certain the winner of Canelo-GGG will be ranked very highly in the rankings lists everyone takes notice of.
With four months to go until fight night, how much bigger will this fight get? And how many further talking points will arise!