It’s the kind of fight Gennady Golovkin has been chasing from the moment he walked off an airplane six years ago to make his new home in Los Angeles.
It’s the fight boxing fans have been waiting for almost as long.
Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez meet Saturday night in a middleweight showdown that has been brewing for years. They do it in their prime, and they both bring the kind of power that could make for a night that will be talked about in boxing for years.
Three weeks after Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor met in an odd spectacle, boxing shows off its best side in a scheduled 12-round fight that will pay both men millions and make one of them the undisputed top 160-pounder in the world.
“It’s a true fight,” Golovkin said. “You can go back home or go to the hospital. It’s dangerous. Everyone understands that.”
The combination of styles has boxing fans salivating over what will happen in the same ring where Mayweather stopped McGregor three weeks ago. The fight quickly sold out and is expected to do well on HBO pay-per-view, though it will not reach the level of last month’s hyped show.
Still, it promises to be a can’t-miss fight that elicits memories of the great middleweights of the 1980s. Both fighters weighed in Friday at the middleweight limit of 160 pounds.
“It all depends on who lands the punch that defines the fight and I think Gennady is going to do that,” said Abel Sanchez, Golovkin’s trainer. “They’re going to hit each other and give fans the kind of fight they want and expect.”
Tim Dahlberg| AP
