Alvarez’s tight win may bring third bout

The fight was so close at the final bell that no one in the arena — including Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez — knew who would leave the ring with the middleweight title belts.

It was Alvarez, though by the slimmest of margins. He won the last round on two scorecards Saturday night on the Las Vegas Strip to hand Golovkin the first loss of his career in a fight that more than lived up to its billing.

To settle who is really the best, though, they may just have to do it a third time. And that’s fine with both fighters, who have now gone 24 rounds together with little but a few points on the scorecards to separate them.

“If the people want us to do it again, let’s do it again,” Alvarez said.

“It would be great to have a third fight,” Golovkin said.

A third fight will almost certainly happen, and for that fight fans have to be grateful. Alvarez and Golovkin showcased their skills — and their sport — at the highest level in a fight that one judge scored a draw and two others had Alvarez by a narrow 115-113 score.

Both fighters thought they had won. But it was Alvarez, the Mexican hero, who proudly carried the belts out of the ring after a bruising 12 rounds that ended with both fighters bloodied and bruised before a roaring crowd of 21,965.

“It’s one of the happiest days of my life,” said Alvarez, who fought Golovkin to a draw a year earlier and had to deal with a positive test for a performance enhancing drug while preparing for the rematch.

It wasn’t so happy for Golovkin, the slugger from Kazakhstan who for years walked through whoever was put in front of him. Golovkin rallied in the final rounds to make the fight close, only to listen in disbelief once again as he wasn’t declared the winner.