By Craig Daly: Eddie Hearn says Canelo Alvarez’s next opponent for his September 17th fight on DAZN PPV will be revealed next week.
The two fighters under consideration are Gennadiy Golovkin & Dmitry Bivol, both of which have shared the ring with Canelo in compelling fights.
Hearn isn’t sure which of the two fighters Canelo (57-2-2, 39 KOs) will be naming. Still, he would like it to be Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs) because that would free Bivol to defend his WBA light heavyweight title against the winner of this Saturday’s fight between Joshua Buatsi and Craig Richards.
Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez, the WBA mandatory at 175, would be another potential option for Bivol.
As badly embarrassed as Canelo was in his loss to Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs) on May 7th, it will be difficult for him not to pick him as his next opponent.
The way Bivol befuddled the Mexican star for 12 one-sided rounds is not the type of loss the highly competitive higher can easily walk away from. Canelo has never been beaten like that before.
Even in his loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, Canelo wasn’t as thoroughly beaten as he was by Bivol. What made things worse for Canelo was how tired & old he looked inside the ring.
He was utterly exhausted after the first three rounds and had the appearance of a fighter that hadn’t worked hard in training camp.
With all the talk of Canelo playing golf during camp and having a TV set inside the gym to watch that sport, you wonder if he was fully present mentally during his training with coach Eddy Reynoso.
Golovkin is 40-years-old and has only fought four times in the last four years since 2018, a shockingly low number for a fighter that was the biggest star in the middleweight division.
In Golovkin’s last fight against inactive 36-year-old WBA middleweight champion Ryota Murata on April 9th, he looked nowhere near the fighter he’d been a decade ago.
Some believe that Golovkin has been in a holding pattern since his rematch with Canelo in 2018, patiently waiting for the well-paying trilogy match to come around and not wanting to take a risk by fighting someone good that could potentially wreck this plans for a third fight.
Little did Golovkin know that Canelo would make him wait four years before giving him the trilogy match that he’s been waiting on.
“I think you go straight into the Bivol fight. If Canelo Alvarez is, who we will probably announce his next move probably next week, really has two options here,” said Eddie Hearn to Boxing Social on Canelo Alvarez’s next fight on September 17th.
“He can rematch Dmitry Bivol, which I know is the one he wants to do, or he can go back into the big trilogy against GGG and then fight Dmitry Bivol,” Hearn continued.
“He’s in a great position. If he chooses to fight Gennadiy Golovkin, then Dmitry Bivol will defend his world championships around the same time.
“The winner of Saturday [Craig Richards vs. Joshua Buatsi] is a prime candidate for that defense, especially being with Matchroom. Although the Canelo fight for the winner on Saturday isn’t really there anymore, the fight with Dmitry Bivol is.
“Right now, he’s arguably the best 175-pounder in the world. Everybody is queuing up. Callum’s [Smith] is queuing up with the WBC; he’s #1. The winner of this fight [Buatsi vs. Richards] will go to #1 or #2 with the WBA.
“If Canelo fights Bivol, I would like to see the winner of Saturday’s fight Gilberto Ramirez. I think that’s a tremendous fight, and [Anthony] Yarde is queuing up as well for [Artur] Beterbiev.
“Anything can happen, but you’ve got to be active because if you’re not active when you get that big chance, you ain’t going to be ready.
“Those are two huge fights. The Golovkin fight [for Canelo] remains the biggest fight in boxing, and even more so now. Canelo had this air of invincibility going into the Bivol fight where he couldn’t get beat.
“He got beat now, so people give Golovkin a lot more chance in that fight than they may have done if he’d cruised past Bivol, but the Bivol rematch is huge.
“GGG and Bivol one after another, it’s all good for the resume. He [Canelo] can’t lose again now. I think it’s incredible that you see Canelo Alvarez drop to six or seven in the pound-for-pound rankings after moving up to a division that he doesn’t even belong to [175] to fight the best in the division, but that’s boxing. We’ll make a decision next week with him,” said Hearn.
