The smoke has finally cleared and the dust is all settled following the explosion of what should have been the Cinco de Mayo superfight rematch between Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez following the Mexican’s pair of failed drug tests. We now know all the details of how the fifth is going to play out and the fallout thereof.
There have been several moving components to this situation that have taken this long to resolve. First, Gennady Golovkin still wants to and will be fighting on May 5th so as to not waste his training camp. Two year inactive junior middleweight Vanes Martrosyan (36-3-1, 21 KOs) is stepping up to take the call. Vanes is a decent fighter, but again he isn’t a middleweight and hasn’t fought in two years. Plus, even though he has been competitive against the likes of Erislandy Lara, Jermell Charlo, and Demetrius Andrade, he hasn’t actually beat any of them. This is a huge step down in competition for now what amounts to a stay busy fight.
The second issue that has come up is whether or not this will remain a PPV. Thankfully, it won’t. HBO will air the fight on its normal airwaves. We will even get an HBO Latino undercard fight featuring the return of former top pound for pound fighter Chocolatito Gonzalez (46-2, 38 KOs) in pretty tough for a return bout against top flyweight contender Pedro Guevara (30-3-1, 17 KOs). Obviously this would have absolutely bombed on PPV, so it is nice that the network found a little money to move the fight off that platform.
Third has been the issue of the IBF title. Of all the sanctioning bodies, the IBF is the strictest. They were allowing Gennady Golovkin to defend against Canelo for the sake of the superfight, but it is their turn in the mandatory defense rotation afterwards. Sergiy Derevyanchenko is in line. Derevyanchenko and his team pushed really hard to get the IBF to strip Golovkin should he fight anyone else on May 5th. In response they have ruled that GGG can take this fight without losing his title, but it won’t be on the line should Martirosyan somehow pull this off. As far as the IBF is concerned, this is a non-title fight.
Finally, we have Canelo Alvarez’s punishment for his two failed drug tests for clenbuterol. All in all he got off pretty soft. Thanks to what the Nevada State Athletic Commission is calling his full cooperation with the investigation, Canelo is only suspended six months retroactive to his first failed drug test. This timeline ends in August and fully sets up for the return of Canelo in the ring on his traditional Mexican Independence Weekend card in early September. We will most likely see the rematch then, though of course Golden Boy and Canelo could decide to take a tuneup first.
There we have it. In short, GGG will defend two of his three titles on May 5th on HBO against Vanes Martirosyan. It isn’t a good fight, really, but it is happening. Canelo is suspended until late summer and will fight again in September in all likelihood.
