Canelo Alvarez's Rumored Plans Don't Lead Toward a Golovkin Superfight in 2017

Don’t worry, boxing fans. Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin are going to fight. It’s just not going to happen right now—and possibly not later either.

It could happen next fall, but that’s no guarantee. All we know is that it’s going to happen.

Sometime.

Maybe.

ESPN.com’s Dan Rafael reported on Wednesday that Golden Boy Promotions (representing Canelo) and Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions (representing Golovkin) have agreed to push off a highly anticipated fight between the two until next fall at the earliest.

That gut punch to the fans, who were hoping to see the fight this coming fall and are still suffering from the hangover of the disastrous Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao saga, came at the request of Golden Boy.

Oscar De La Hoya’s company, which counts Canelo as its biggest star by far, preferred to put the bout off to give more time to build it into a commercial success and allow the Mexican sensation a few more fights to acclimate to the middleweight limit of 160 pounds.

There are a couple of key points worth noting here.

This isn’t the first time fans have been sold this particular bill of goods.

Eric Gomez, representing Golden Boy, and Loeffler agreed last December to push off a fight between Canelo and GGG to this coming fall. The logic behind that decision was basically the same as today.

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Each man was allowed an interim bout, which Golovkin used to earth overmatched mandatory challenger Dominic Wade, while Canelo blasted out a blown-up welterweight known for having chin issues at a catchweight.

Canelo stood in the ring after starching Amir Khan and talked a big game. He invited Golovkin into the ring, dropped some profanity while emphasizing his man credentials and then threw his WBC belt (of which GGG was the mandatory) into the trash to avoid “artificial deadlines," per an official statement released by his promoter.

Not a good look for a fighter who just a couple of weeks prior was talking national pride and sounded like a guy willing to take on a squadron of frothing wolverines just to prove his toughness to the critics.

Canelo has never looked like a ducker, having stared down plenty of tough challenges, more than a few likely against the wishes of his promoters. But his handlers can hardly market him as the face of a new era in boxing when this play stinks like rotten refuse left over from the old era.

An era that many fans (at least of the serious sort) were tired of and happy to see wave bye bye with the retirements of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

Any number of a million (slight hyperbole) things could happen in the course of the year-plus that fans are now expected to wait for a fight that is ripe now and features two of the sport’s biggest stars.

One or both could lose.

Someone could get injured.

Financial demands could change.

Also, it’s worth reiterating, this agreement is nothing more than a deal to work on the fight for next fall. It says nothing about the myriad contractual issues (some of which could be sticky wickets) that need to be worked out before Michael Buffer lets us know it’s time to rumble.

What we have here is an agreement to try to make an agreement in a year.

Canelo and team’s claims that they need a few fights to get acclimated to the middleweight division don’t seem to hold a ton of water.

Not after fighting Khan and certainly not based on what seems likely to happen next.

Rafael’s report indicated, per his sources, that the cinnamon-haired superstar would be returning to his familiar stomping grounds of junior middleweight for his September contest, possibly with a world title on the line.

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Why fight a weight division below to get ready for a full-fledged middleweight?

And, while we’re on the subject, who the heck is down there who’s both enticing and possible?

Erislandy Lara, Jermell Charlo and Jermall Charlo all hold world titles.

It seems highly unlikely that Golden Boy would ever put Canelo back in there with Lara, who dropped a contested split decision in their 2014 fight, and the Charlos are both managed by Al Haymon and possess apple-cart-upsetting talent.

One name that has come up quite a bit is WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith.

Rafael reported earlier in June that Smith was considered one of the front-runners to land a date with Canelo, should the GGG fight go unmade, which we now know it will, and that opponent choice would say a whole lot about the seriousness of this agreement.

If Canelo and team are really being honest with the fans about their desire to face Golovkin at any point in the near future, a move back down to junior middleweight—particularly one against a fighter who doesn’t even make The Ring Magazine’s top five in the division—makes zero sense.

And it would show the fans, who put their hearts and souls into the sport, that, once again, they’re being pulled along for a ride that leads to nowhere.