With circus over, it’s time for a real fight
Alvarez-Golovkin title match is likely to live up to hype.
The freak show of a fight is over, and for that everyone in boxing should be glad. That Conor McGregor managed to make it into the 10th round against a retired 40-year-old who can’t knock real boxers out isn’t much to celebrate, unless you’re McGregor’s accountant.
Yes, McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr. captured the nation’s attention with a spectacle that played out pretty much how most experts predicted. It made for a grand time in living rooms across the country, providing entertainment for about 50 million people. Now comes the real fight. Canelo Alvarez against Gennady Golovkin is as good as it gets in the Sweet Science, a sport in the midst of a renaissance of sorts. They meet Saturday night in a middleweight title clash as highly anticipated by boxing purists as was McGregor’s challenge of Mayweather to UFC fans.
Two fighters who both rank high on anyone’s pound-for-pound list. One loss between them, with Golovkin’s three middleweight belts on the line.
And unlike Mayweather, they knock people out.
“It is not a fight,” Golovkin said. “It is a war.”
It shapes up as the most anticipated fight of the year in boxing. It’s not a stretch to say it might be the best middleweight clash since Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns engaged in their three-round classic more than 30 years ago.
“We’re both going to fight a fight where anybody can win by knockout,” Alvarez said. “We both have the power to win by knockout. But that’s what makes for a great fight.”
That the fight comes only three weeks after McGregor and Mayweather persuaded more than 4 million households to buy their pay-perview is not fault of the fighters or their promoters. The fight was announced in May, before Mayweather-McGregor was finalized.
Oscar De La Hoya, who promotes Alvarez, made no secret of his disdain for the Mayweather-McGregor fight.
But viewers seemed generally satisfied with the money they spent on Mayweather-McGregor, and boxing fans will open their wallets for this bout. It won’t sell as much as the most recent fight, but it still figures to do huge payper-view numbers, particularly among Mexican-American fans of Alvarez.
It should be money well spent.
Rain and strong winds forced firstround play to be scrapped at the final women’s major of the season, which will start today as a 54-hole event.
LPGA Tour Commissioner Michael Whan said what the little play was achieved Thursday morning at the Evian Championship at the Evian Resort Golf Club overlooking Lake Geneva in Evian-Les-Bains, France, is wiped from the record.
European Tour: Bernd Wiesberger and Richard Finch each shot 5-under 66 to share the clubhouse lead after a rain-shortened opening round at the KLM Open in Spijk, Netherlands.
The leaders were among the early starters and avoided the worst of the wind and driving rain that later flooded fairways and forced a suspension of play at the par-71 The Dutch course. The first round will resume today.