By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Oscar De La Hoya believes Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin will fight for more than millions of dollars and four middleweight titles.
According to “The Golden Boy,” the winner of their September 16 bout won’t just leave the T-Mobile Arena ring in Las Vegas with the IBF, IBO, WBA and WBC 160-pound championships Golovkin currently owns. De La Hoya, a retired six-division champion, feels the Mexican superstar and the Kazakh knockout artist also will fight for boxing’s mythical pound-for-pound crown.
De La Hoya, whose company promotes Alvarez, said during their press tour this week that the Alvarez-Golovkin winner will have earned the top spot on pound-for-pound lists.
“This is the best fight that can be made in the world today,” De La Hoya said Tuesday night in The Theater at Madison Square Garden. “And I strongly believe that the winner will be the best fighter on the planet. Absolutely.”
The Ring magazine, which De La Hoya’s company owns, ranks undefeated Andre Ward at No. 1 on its pound-for-pound list. Ward (32-0, 16 KOs), of Hayward, California, stopped Russia’s Sergey Kovalev (30-2-1, 26 KOs) in the eighth round of their light heavyweight championship rematch Saturday night at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
The 35-year-old Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs), who is a slight betting favorite over Alvarez, is ranked No. 2 on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list. The 26-year-old Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) is rated No. 8 by The Ring, one spot behind the seventh-ranked Kovalev.
In accordance with lineage, Alvarez owns The Ring’s middleweight title, a championship he won when he defeated Miguel Cotto (40-5, 33 KOs) by unanimous decision in November 2015 at Mandalay Bay Events Center.
Ward also is ranked No. 1 pound-for-pound by ESPN.com and figures to be elevated to the top spot on BoxingScene.com’s list when it is next updated.
Alvarez and Golovkin, meanwhile, completed their four-day, three-city press tour Thursday night. The tour to promote their HBO Pay-Per-View bout began Monday in London, continued Tuesday in Manhattan and ended in Los Angeles.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.