Mayweather comeback won’t overshadow me — Golovkin

LONDON: Gennady Golovkin has dismissed the idea that Floyd Mayweather Jr’s comeback against Conor McGregor will overshadow his Sep 16 clash with Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.

WBC-IBF-WBA middleweight champion Golovkin defends his world title belts at the TMobi le Arena three weeks after Mayweather faces Conor McGregor at the same Las Vegas venue.

Five-weight world champion Mayweather, now 40, will not have fought for nearly two years by the time he faces 27-year-old Irishman McGregor, a mixed martial arts fighter, on Aug 26.

But McGregor, a two- weight UFC champion, has never fought as a professional boxer and faces the sport’s best practitioner for decades.

Golovkin ( 37- 0, 33 KOs), 35, insists his fight with Alvarez (491-1, 34 KOs) is bigger and of more significance than MayweatherMcGregor, which he sees as a “circus show”.

“This ( Mayweather-McGregor) is not for fighters, but business,” Golovkin told reporters at a press conference in London Monday.

“I think people understand what is a true fight, a boxing fight, like mine with Caneno or a big show, maybe sometimes for people a funny show, like a circus show.

“Everybody knows – Conor is not boxer, just show. If you want to watch a show please watch them, if you want to watch a true fight, a true boxing fight and you respect boxing, watch my fight with Canelo.

“This is business. Conor with Floyd is not a boxing fight because Conor is not a boxer. Money fight OK, show fight OK.”

Regardless of some dismissing it as a mismatch, MayweatherMcGregor is expected to do record business for a boxing fight and may eclipse GolovkinAlvarez in revenue and television viewers.

But Golovkin- Alvarez is a fight for the ages, one of the most eagerly awaited boxing match-ups in recent memory.

It pits two crowd-pleasing icons against each other to decide the world’s best middleweight. — AFP