NEW YORK–The rivalry between Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin has not lost its luster with the public, insists an executive at DAZN.

Alvarez and Golovkin will fight for a third time on DAZN Pay-Per-View Sept. 17 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for Alvarez’s four 168-pound titles. The two first fought in 2017 in a fight that ended in a controversial draw; Alvarez won the second bout in a close fight in 2018.

The trilogy was originally supposed to occur much sooner as part of DAZN’s American expansion. The streaming platform, which entered the US market in 2018, signed both Alvarez and Golovkin to hefty multi-bout deals with the intention to pair them up in a mega fight that would bring the newfangled company an influx of subscribers.

Despite the protracted gap between the second and third bouts, Joe Markowski, an executive vice president at DAZN, believes interest in the fight has not lagged with the public very much, if at all.

“The intrigue from the public has remained, 100%," Markowski told BoxingScene.com Monday afternoon at a news conference in Manhattan to announce Canelo-Golovkin III. “You can use any metric you want to look at, from a social media perspective, from a media perspective – we study the chatter of boxing fans.”

Markowski noted, however, that demand for the trilogy was certainly helped by the fact that Alvarez lost to Dmitry Bivol by unanimous decision in their light heavyweight title bout in May. Conversely, Markowski believes Golovkin’s late-round beatdown of Ryota Murata earlier this year to unify the WBA and IBF middleweight titles also helped renew interest in the trilogy.

“I think the intrigue is probably different to what it was two or three years ago,” Markowski said. “If you had asked me six, three months ago if boxing fans cared about this fight as much as they did three years ago, the answer is probably not.

“I think a lot of boxing people, having watched Canelo-Bivol, think Canelo is beatable, and having watched Gennadiy’s last fight, you know, put him back into a place where he can beat Canelo. Even people who criticize the fight, of which there are some, they’re going to watch it because it is a fight that draws intrigue like few others.”

Markowski said the Bivol loss helped Alvarez agree to face Golovkin. Alvarez, Markowski pointed out, still wants to avenge his loss to Bivol.

“We didn’t have those conversations (about fighting Golovkin) until after the Bivol fight and I think Canelo probably is more open to it now than pre-Bivol,” Markowski said. “He clearly wants to move back up to 175 and beat Bivol and right that wrong from his perspective. Before that, he’s got business to take care of here.”