By Miguel Rivera
World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaiman is expecting all-out fireworks when WBC, WBA, IBO middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) defends his world titles against Saul "Canelo" Alvarez (49-1-2, 34 KOs) in a rematch.
The rematch has been finalized for September 15th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Their first encounter, which took place in September 2017, ended in a controversial twelve round spilt draw.
This time around, there is a lot of bad blood between the two boxers.
Their rematch date was scheduled to take place on May 5th. Canelo withdrew from the contest after testing positive for the banned substance clenbuterol.
Following his withdrawal, Canelo received a six month suspension from the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
Golovkin has been very vocal about the matter, and raised a lot of eyebrows when he broke character a few months ago in accusing Canelo of being a longtime user of performance enhancing drugs - and he even questioned whether or not Canelo was clean in their first encounter.
Canelo has promised to severely punish Golovkin for those statements. The Mexican superstar maintains that his positive tests were directly related to the consumption of contaminated meat.
"The rematch has the potential to be even greater than their first encounter. There's a tremendous amount of animosity between them, with both absolutely determined to show and prove who's the best when they get in the ring," Sulaiman said.
"Let's hope they both have a good preparation for the fight. Let's see what they can bring and achieve for the expectant boxing fans of the world."
Referring to the nine years age difference, Sulaiman said - "Fighters never know the exact moment when their legs are going to give out or when they will lose a fraction of a second [with their timing]. But Gennady always comes to fight in phenomenally great shape."
2023-10-21 06:54:31
