By Miguel Rivera

BoxingScene.com's Steve Kim first reported that a middleweight showdown between Gennady Golovkin and Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez was going to be pushed back to the fall of 2017.

Fans were hoping to see them battle this coming September. Earlier this year, the World Boxing Council ordered Canelo (47-1-1, 33KOs) to face Golovkin (35-0, 32KOs), the mandatory challenger, in the fall.

The two sides made a deal where each of them would take an interim bout and then face each other at the end of the year. Golovkin came back in April and knocked out Dominic Wade, while Canelo was in action in early May with a brutal knockout of Amir Khan.

Not longer after knocking Khan out, Canelo vacated the WBC middleweight title. The sanctioning body then named Golovkin as their full champion.

Golovkin, who also holds the IBF/IBO/WBA world titles, will start his training camp in the first week of July with head trainer Abel Sanchez.

The opponent is unknown, but British champion Chris Eubank Jr. is a strong candidate for the contest.

Sanchez has no idea why everyone should wait until next September - he feels the fight is as big as it will ever be at this very moment after both boxers had strong knockouts in their interim fights.

"What I know is that Golovkin will return in the last week of August or early September," Sanchez said to ESPN Deportes. "Regarding the opponent, what I can tell you is that the weekend I will see Tom Loeffler in New York and then we will see. All I'm saying is that on July 3 Gennady will be coming with me to training camp and after that he will come with me to the Dennis Shafikov fight in Pennsylvania."

"[Golovkin-Canelo] is a fight that doesn't need to warm up. It doesn't need more time. That fight has long been promoting itself among the people. It's already boiling. But I don't know if [the fight was hurt] by Canelo's decision to vacate."