The third fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin will happen Saturday, September 17 for the unified super middleweight championship. The fight will be held at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Alvarez (57-2-1) is a -550 favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook and will be putting up his WBA, WBC, IBF, IBO and The Ring titles. Golovkin (42-1-1) is a +370 underdog and has moved up in weight for this bout.
Both of the previous fights have had their share of controversy.
The first fight happened at T-Mobile Arena on September 16, 2017 for the unified middleweight championship.
Golovkin, the champion, was a -150 favorite going into the first. It was a tactical, hard-hitting fight with Alvarez starting strong, but Golovkin finding his range and controlling the middle rounds. Alvarez, a +130 underdog, closed the fight strong and won the final three rounds on all three judges scorecards. The result of the fight was a a draw with Dave Moretti scoring it 115-113 in favor of Golovkin, Don Trella scoring it a 114-114 draw and Adalaide Byrd scoring it 118-110 for Alvarez.
Byrd’s scorecard was considered highly controversial because even the small number of people that thought Alvarez won concede he didn’t come close to winning 10 rounds. Such a scorecard continued the belief by some that boxing is fixed and clearly favors the fighter with the higher financial upside.
If you had Golovkin winning 115-113 and someone else saw two rounds differently (there were about five toss-up rounds) and had it as a draw or Canelo winning 115-113, that's just boxing. The issue in the first fight wasn't the draw but Adalaide Byrd's absurd 118-110 scorecard.
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) September 16, 2018
Golovkin outlanded Alvarez 218 to 169 on CompuBox and was thought to have won the fight by most of the boxing media in attendance.
Financially the fight did exceptionally well, drawing $110 million in revenue with 1.3 million PPV buys. Alvarez received $5 million up front and a 70 percent of the PPV shared revenue. Golovkin made $3 million guaranteed and 30 percent of the PPV shared revenue.