by David P. Greisman

Four and a half months ago, Canelo Alvarez knocked out Amir Khan and then called Gennady Golovkin into the ring. Today, Canelo isn’t fighting Golovkin. He is fighting Liam Smith and his team is saying that a Golovkin fight, if it comes, won’t come until later in 2017.

Longtime boxing analyst Larry Merchant is in Dallas to work the online streaming broadcast of Smith vs. Canelo. While he, too, wants to see Canelo vs Golovkin, he understands why it’s not happening yet.

“In today’s economics, it’s not that surprising,” Merchant told BoxingScene.com while standing in AT&T Stadium after the weigh-in. “And I think it will be a natural buildup, in some parallel fashion to Pacquiao and Mayweather, where we waited five years. I don’t think we’ll wait five years on this occasion. But it creates a bit of interest. And I think in a relatively short time, in the next year, we’ll see the fight.”

Given the number of tickets being sold for a fight like Canelo vs. Smith, and given the money he will make on pay-per-view, Alvarez is making the right decision — financially speaking, Merchant said.

“Because Canelo is the biggest attraction in boxing,” he said. “There are going to be 50,000 live bodies watching the body against somebody that probably none of the 50,000 have ever heard of before. Imagine Golovkin in that situation. You can’t. That’s the difference that matters in a professional sport that is a sport and a business.”

The complaint from Golovkin’s team has long been that the top middleweights haven’t been willing to face him. Many of them can make money without putting themselves in as much danger.

“I think that they’re not anxious to fight him because he is such a perfect fighter and a dangerous opponent, that if the economics don’t work out, why would you have to fight him?” Merchant said. “We as fans want to see the fight, obviously. And I think we’ll get to see it. But he himself fought a welterweight in his last fight, and he himself has not stepped up to fight Ward, in the past when that’s been suggested. So it works in different ways.”

But is Canelo ducking Golovkin?

“Yeah, I think he is for the time,” Merchant said. “He’s going to make some money, and maybe grow a little bit — I don’t know, he’s still a young guy. But I think it is a business decision, as well as a fighting decision.”

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com