Canelo and Golovkin can join greats

THE biggest fight of this and many a year is hallmarked for an immortal place in the history of the hardest game. Canelo Alvarez versus Gennady Golovkin for the middleweight championship of the world is being likened to some of the greatest ever fights in this classic division. The winner could be exalted in the company of such legends as Sugar Ray Robinson, Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns and Roberto Duran. So says Oscar De La Hoya, the Golden Boy promoter of Saturday night’s prospective epic in the T-Mobile Arena. ‘Canelo against Golovkin will go down in history,’ says De La Hoya. ‘It will be a fight talked about for many years. The way Hearns and Hagler and Leonard v Hearns are still being talked about more than 30 years later.’ Golovkin (right), 35, agrees, saying: ‘We are in a history fight. All my career I have been waiting for this defining fight. As a kid I was at home in Kazakhstan watching Leonard, Hagler, Hearns in those incredible fights. I thought — wow! Now I am thinking wow about this fight of ours. This is big for him and certainly big for me. We both want to give the fans a fight to remember.’ Canelo, 27, says: ‘All the ingredients are here for a great fight. This fight can do for me what those great fights did for Leonard, Hagler and Hearns.’ De La Hoya believes they will deliver because their driving passions are glory, not money. He adds: ‘This fight will be in the highest traditions of boxing. These men are in the hurt business. Not the whole money business. ‘Yes, the prize at the end of this tunnel is the purse. But they are not thinking about it. They will fight with everything they have because of their passion for the game. In the history of great fights each boxer needed a great dance partner. In that way Canelo and Gennady need each other.’