In February, Alvarez agreed to a multi-fight deal with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing. This also included a boxing match against GGG on Sept. 17.
The match was almost derailed after Alvarez suffered an unexpected defeat from Dmitry Bivol with some going so far as to say that the rematch is pointless considering the size discrepancy.
The Russian was dominating the bout despite what the judges score cards are showing.
Alvarez even picked up Bivol at one point in frustration and wanted to body slam him.
In a 175-pound championship fight, Alvarez was a 4-1 favorite to beat Bivol, but he lost a unanimous decision.
After making his decision, Alvarez will return to 168 lb, where he is the undisputed champion.
Alvarez has to defend all four super middleweight championships against Golovkin on Mexican Independence Day weekend. The venue has yet to be determined, but the first two fights were held in Las Vegas.
Since winning an Olympic silver medal in 2004, Golovkin, a unified middleweight champion, has been fighting at 160 pounds. Hearn feels Golovkin will profit from the additional eight pounds, and that the defeat to Bivol will make the bout even greater.
In March, Golovkin, ESPN’s No. 2 middleweight, said, “I am comfortable knowing I won those fights.”
“I do not look back at the decisions. … I thought I won the first two, so winning the third one would be the same to me.”
Both bouts between the two were spectacular contests at the highest level. There’s still a lot of bad blood between the two fighters after Alvarez tested positive for a PED ahead of their rematch in May 2018.
Despite his claims that the negative test was due to contaminated meat ingested in Mexico, he was banned for six months. The rematch was delayed for September 2018 — but not before Golovkin threw many obscenities at Alvarez.
And now it looks like both Alvarez and GGG are in agreement when it comes to PED testing – they’ve agreed to submit samples.
Should be interesting to see if Alvarez sticks to the new vegan diet in fall out from the Bivol boxing match.
Both Golovkin and Alvarez have agreed to VADA testing for the bout in partnership with the WBC’s ‘Clean Boxing’ programme.
“If he believes it was something I said and that it was personal, where has he been all these years? Three or four years already,” Golovkin told Ariel Helwani. “If it’s personal, what has he been waiting for? I have not said anything bad, whatever has been said was tied to those scandals, and he was the cause of those scandals. There were arguments and proof. It’s not me, it’s the entire world, If he believes I’m talking s***.