By Keith Idec

NEW YORK – Tom Loeffler feels the only potential obstacle that’ll prevent the third Canelo Alvarez-Gennadiy Golovkin fight from happening next is Alvarez not actually wanting to face Golovkin again.

Golovkin’s promotional representative indicated early Sunday morning that there’s no real reason other than that for the middleweight rivals not to square off a third time September 14. Mexico’s Alvarez and Kazakhstan’s Golovkin each signed a nine-figure contract with DAZN since Alvarez edged Golovkin by majority decision in their 12-round rematch September 14 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

DAZN executive chairman John Skipper plans to push the two stars toward a third bout because he thinks it’ll help produce the number of subscriptions the emerging streaming service needs to start justifying the type of money it has spent since launching in the United States in September.

Loeffler discussed what will happen now that Golovkin has knocked out Steve Rolls in the fourth round of his DAZN debut Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.

“We’ll sit down with the team,” Loeffler said. “Naturally, DAZN is the common partner. Again, when Triple-G signed with DAZN, John Skipper said that’s the clearest path to a third Canelo fight. So, John’s gonna do his thing, whatever he can work out and discuss with Oscar and Canelo. … We made two fights with Golden Boy. There were a lot of roadblocks, a lot of obstacles in making those two fights. We made a lot of concessions on the Triple-G side. But since they fought each other twice, I don’t think there’s gonna be a huge issue making the third fight, unless Canelo really doesn’t wanna get in the ring a third time with [Golovkin].”

These negotiations figure to be less complicated than last year, when Alvarez and Golovkin nearly walked away from their rematch to fight other opponents. Golovkin had a backup bout arranged with former WBO champ Billy Joe Saunders before Oscar De La Hoya, Alvarez’s promoter, met Golovkin’s demand for a 55-45 revenue split that still favored Alvarez.

Their rematch was a pay-per-view event distributed by HBO Sports, which announced soon thereafter that it would stop broadcasting boxing by the end of 2018. Now that DAZN has committed enormous sums of money to Alvarez and Golovkin, Loeffler is confident they’ll meet a third time in three months.

De La Hoya trolled Golovkin (39-1-1, 35 KOs) on Twitter late Saturday night by indicating Golovkin must go “win a belt” before he’ll consider a third fight against Alvarez (52-1-2, 35 KOs).

The 28-year-old Alvarez won the IBO, WBA and WBC 160-pound championships from Golovkin, and later took the IBF title from Daniel Jacobs. Demetrius Andrade (27-0, 17 KOs), the WBO champion, is scheduled to oppose Poland’s Maciej Sulecki (28-1, 11 KOs) on June 29 in Providence, Rhode Island, Andrade’s hometown.

“I don’t think there’s really any reason to speculate about a different fight [than Alvarez-Golovkin] until it becomes clear – the second fight we thought wasn’t gonna happen,” Loeffler said. “Golden Boy had announced that they had a deadline. They had a deadline set and Gennadiy held his ground, and we made the second fight. So, I’m not sure how Canelo’s deal is structure, but clearly there’s gotta be an incentive on DAZN’s side for him to fight Triple-G – just like there is for Gennadiy to fight Canelo. So, it makes financial sense for both guys, it’s the fight that the fans want, the media are demanding it. Frankly, it’s one of the biggest fights that can be made in the sport.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.