LOS ANGELES – Gennadiy Golovkin has gone toe-to-toe with Canelo Alvarez for 24 rounds in highly competitive fights, but he doesn’t have a win to show for it. 

The first bout between the two stars ended in a split draw, and the second in a majority decision win for Alvarez. 

Alvarez and Golovkin will fight once again on Sept. 17 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on DAZN pay-per-view for Alvarez’s undisputed super middleweight title. 

Golovkin believes he will be boxing against a better version of Alvarez in a fight that is four years in the making. 

“I think so [that Alvarez is a better fighter since our 2018 rematch]. Yes. Before the first two fights, I said that whoever wins will have an amazing career and will go far, and that’s exactly what happened as a result,” Golovkin told BoxingScene.com and other reporters. 

“Canelo looks better since 2018 because his opponents have paled in comparison to me.

“Champions are champions, of course. Some champions are better than others.”

Ever since Alvarez (57-2-2, 39 KOs) last faced Triple G in Sept. 2018, he has beaten Daniel Jacobs, Sergey Kovalev, Callum Smith, Avni Yildirim, Billy Joe Saunders, and Caleb Plant, and most recently in May, he lost to Dmitry Bivol.

Alvarez was widely considered the pound-for-pound king of the sport while crusading through 160 and 175 pounds until losing to Bivol. He currently still stands as the undisputed super middleweight champion – a feat he accomplished by collecting all of the belts in a four-fight, 11-month span from Dec. 2020 to Nov. 2021. 

The 40-year-old Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs), meanwhile, has beaten Steve Rolls, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Kamil Szeremeta, and Ryota Murata and claimed two middleweight titles along the way ever since fighting Alvarez. 

The Mexican star has insisted that the third fight against Golovkin is a personal one for him. 

“I wasn’t that surprised [that this fight is personal for Alvarez]. But on the other hand, if it’s personal to him and his team, you should ask him why exactly,” said Golovkin. “In my opinion, I don’t think anything is personal. This is a sport. If he says it was personal, then why was he putting the third fight off for so long and not resolving the situation?

“If you have something against your opponent, you display it during the fight. When the fight is over, you hug each other, you shake hands, and you put everything past you.”

Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer and broadcast reporter. He’s also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan, via email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com or on www.ManoukAkopyan.com.