The Hottest Boxing Storylines for the Week of August 28

The biggest fight of the year is signed, sealed and delivered.

Sergey Kovalev will defend his IBF, WBA and WBO Light Heavyweight Championships against Andre Ward November 19 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on HBO pay-per-view. 

It's about time that fans have something to look forward to in what has been a year of steady disappointments.

Canelo Alvarez and his promoter Oscar De La Hoya are once again talking about why they need to put off a fight with Gennady Golovkin until next year at the earliest, but are they just blowing smoke? Or are they trying to lower expectations even further?

Also, we take a look at Amir Khan's future plans, what went into Luis Ortiz's decision to leave Golden Boy Promotions and the possible end for Robert Guerrero and Alfredo Angulo.

These are the hottest boxing storylines for the week!

Is Golden Boy Lowering Expectations for Canelo-GGG?

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Canelo and his team held a media conference call last week to hype the Mexican star's 154-pound title showdown with Great Britain's Liam Smith, and as you can probably expect, there were several inquiries about the cinnamon-haired sensation's future plans vis-a-vis Golovkin. 

That's not surprising given the negative fan response to Canelo's decision to move down in weight and challenge Smith, who was a complete unknown outside of the hardest core of boxing circles in the United States, after talking tough basically to GGG's face after his knockout win over Khan in May. 

Canelo, for his part, maintained that he wasn't worried or bothered by the heavy amount of criticism he's received, including being tarred with the dreaded "ducker" label that doesn't fit well with the claims of his promoter Oscar De La Hoya that he's boxing's new face in the post-Floyd Mayweather era.

"Yeah, you know, there's always going to be critics. It's part of the business," Canelo said on the call via his translator. "It doesn't faze me. That's fine. I'm used to it now, and I've got to do what's best for my career."

You can question whether talking tough and then turning tail is what's best for his career. He told the media on the call that he didn't need to prepare for GGG and that it was the Kazakh who needed to prepare for him, but De La Hoya continued to defend the matchup and kick the can down the road on an eventual showdown. 

"Canelo knows his body. His trainers know his body, and the bottom line is Canelo is a 154-pound fighter. The fact that he fought at 155, people expect him to go up and fight at middleweight, and that's not the case," De La Hoya said. "He's a 54-pounder, and he's going to go up to 160 when his body feels ready."

Let's leave alone that 155 pounds is middleweight. 

De La Hoya also maintained that the Golovkin fight will happen when Canelo is ready and seemed to harp an awful lot on outselling Manny Pacquiao at the AT&T Arena as a way of proving his man is the next face of the sport. 

Let the speculation begin, as Canelo, in comments to Phil D. Jay of World Boxing News last week, said that he would love to fight Pacquiao, who returns November 5 in a challenge for Jessie Vargas' WBO Welterweight Championship.

Can Boxing Fans Finally Rejoice?

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The biggest fight of the year is on!

Keith Idec of Boxing Scene broke the news on Twitter Saturday afternoon that a long-awaited deal for Kovalev to defend his unified light heavyweight championship against Ward had finally been reached after a few nervous moments. 

Kovalev and Ward will meet November 19 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on HBO PPV.

The two sides had reached a deal for the fight some time ago, but the contracts weren't signed, and reports surfaced earlier in August that negotiations had hit a few rocky patches, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Luckily, those weren't enough to derail what immediately jumps to the front of the line as the year's most anticipated fight. It's been a year of disappointments for fans, so this bit of good news is welcome. 

Kovalev and Ward are among the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport. You could make a compelling case that either man could occupy the top spot, and the winner of this fight will certainly have a tremendous case to win that argument.

It's unusual—in this era of boxing—for two fighters of this caliber to meet with this much on the line. Fighters spend more time making excuses or hiding behind bean counters instead of giving fans the fights they want to see, so both of these men deserve credit.

Let's just hope the fight delivers. 

Is Amir Khan Ready to Return to Fighting?

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Khan, who has only fought once in each of the last two years, is planning to take the rest of 2016 off before returning next year for what he hopes will be three fights. 

The British former junior welterweight champion said on his Twitter account last week that he'd like to be back in the ring for fights in January, May and December of next year. The last time he fought three times in a single calendar year was in 2011 when he started the year with wins over Paul McCloskey and Zab Judah before losing a controversial decision to Lamont Peterson.

Khan, as is his way, has been trying to drum up attention for potential big fights that have little chance of actually happening in the ring. He followed up his implosion-style knockout loss to Canelo by zeroing in his social media calls on UFC star Conor McGregor. That won't happen, and we should be thankful for that.

A more realistic path would lead him to a rematch with current WBC welterweight champion Danny Garcia.

Garcia is widely expected to make a voluntary defense in the fall against Andre Berto, a fight that nobody wants and is kind of inexcusable given the depth of competition at 147 pounds, but Khan remains his mandatory despite a loss to Canelo two divisions north. 

That fight should happen next year.

But Garcia and Khan are tricky cases.

The Brit seems borderline obsessed with hitching his name to the biggest in combat sports while letting realistic opportunities pass him by, while Garcia has been on a steady diet of disappointing and/or overmatched foes since an upset win over Lucas Matthysse in September 2013 showed his star potential.

What Went into Ortiz's Split with Golden Boy?

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Ortiz and his now-former promoters at Golden Boy Promotions reached a settlement last week that allowed the Cuban heavyweight slugger to part ways with the company, per Mitch Abramson of Ring TV.

Dade Promotions, who co-promoted the big hitter appropriately known as "King Kong," is now his exclusive promoter and will move forward with plans for him to defend his interim WBA Heavyweight Championship against Russian Alexander Ustinov. 

That fight went to a purse bid last week, which was won by Ustinov's people and will likely be staged in Russia sometime early this fall. 

A good number of media members and fans were highly critical of Ortiz's decision to split with a his longtime promoter that stood by him after a failed drug test overturned an impressive first-round knockout of Lateef Kayode in September 2014 and imperiled his career. 

Jake Donovan of Boxing Scene seems to be the only guy who bothered to get the fighter's perspective on the situation, and when you take a look at it from the eyes of Ortiz, it's hard to argue the point too much:

"

I have never turned away any fighter and will never turn away any fighter. All the top guys are not with Golden Boy so the move was inevitable. ... 

All the other heavyweights, maybe they can't even speak basic Spanish because my name isn't that hard to pronounce yet none of them seem to be able to say it. If they wanted to blame my promoter or my network, well that’s no longer an excuse.

"

Ortiz is 37 years old and not getting any younger. He doesn't have years and years to wait around for a big opportunity. His perspective is that freeing himself up from any promotional and network snags gives him more options for fights and removes any excuses for potential challengers. 

Time for a Pair of Warriors to Call It Quits?

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It's never easy for a fighter to realize when the time is right to walk away. 

Guerrero and Angulo, two all-action warriors who have produced exciting moments inside the ring, were placed on a Premier Boxing Champions card on Saturday night at the Honda Center in California with the expectation that they'd win and make one final run. 

And that's why they fight the fights in the ring and not on paper.

Freddy Hernandez, who entered having won just four of his previous 11 fights, easily broke Angulo's two-fight winning streak with a wide and deserved unanimous decision. No disrespect to Hernandez—a trial horse who has been in there with many good fighters—but if you can't hang with him, it's time to hang 'em up.

Guerrero's loss was perhaps even more shocking.

The Ghost has looked like a spent fighter recently, though he did give produce a fun scrap with Danny Garcia earlier this year. However, his ability to compete near the top level of the sport is now done after he dropped a decision to a literal Argentine cab driver.

David Peralta entered the ring as a colossal underdog and fell behind in the early rounds before coming on late to nip a decision that should send the Gilroy, California, native out to pasture. Things could have been even wider on the scorecards had Peralta been credited with an obvious knockdown that the referee somehow missed.

Guerrero and Angulo have given fans a lot during their careers, but it's over now.

Hopefully, they realize that and walk away.

All quotes were obtained firsthand.