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Canelo Alvarez was recently in talks to face WBO super middleweight champion, Billy Joe Saunders — who is 29-0 with 14 knockouts — on May 2, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, it seems promoters have decided to take another route.
According to the The Athletic, the Saunders bout will be put on hold for the time being, as Canelo has agreed to face Gennady Golovkin a third time later this year. While not yet official, the report states that the trilogy fight is expected to go down on Sept 12, 2020 inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which can hold over 80,000 screaming fans.
The two men initially threw down in Sept. of 2017, fighting to a split draw in Las Vegas. Almost exactly a year later, the hard-hitting pugilists ran it back, with Alvarez scoring a majority decision over Golovkin, handing him the first loss of his career.
Since then, Gennady has gone on to defeat Steve Rolls and Sergiy Derevyanchenko, winning the vacant IBF and IBO middleweight titles in the process. As for Alvarez, he defeated Rocky Fielding via technical knockout to win the WBA super middleweight title, before outclassing Daniel Jacobs. More recently, the hard-hitting Mexican born champion knocked out Sergey Kovalev last November to win the WBO light heavyweight title.
Alvarez has been at the center of several call outs from mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters, specifically Tyron Woodley and Jorge Masvidal. But as expected, the multi-division boxing champion dismissed the challenges.
Of course, the hopes are that the worldwide coronavirus pandemic — which has halted nearly all sporting activity across the globe — has subsided by September in order to put on what is sure-to-be another classic from two of the best in the game.