Alvarez, Golovkin set for rematch

Canelo Alvarez has gone to bed the last few months thinking about how he’s going to knock out Gennady Golovkin in their middle- weight title rematch.

To wake up Sunday morn- ing as the 160-pound champion, though, he’ll have to take some chances he didn’t in his first fight with Golovkin a year ago. And that could be a real problem against a fearsome puncher who has knocked out 34 fighters in his 39 professional fights.

“I know it’s going to be a tough fight,” Alvarez said. “But I’m going in there to knock him out.”

Alvarez and Golovkin get another chance to settle what they couldn’t last September when they meet in a rematch of their first fight, which ended in a draw. They do so tonight on the Las Vegas Strip not as the gentleman fighters they portrayed themselves to be then, but as bit- ter rivals who legitimately seem to dislike each other.

That showed at Friday’s weigh-in, when the two fighters had to be sepa- rated in their only face-toface appearance before the fight. Golovkin weighed 159.6 pounds and Alvarez 159.4.

A positive test by Alvarez for clenbuterol forced the rematch to be postponed from May. At the same time it produced some hard feel- ings between the two fighters over Alvarez’s contention that it was caused by eating contaminated meat in his native Mexico.

Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 knock- outs) is a slight favorite in the rematch, much as he was in the first fight. Many at ringside thought he won that bout, but Alvarez (49-12, 34 knockouts) pulled off a draw by winning the late rounds as the 36-year-old Golovkin seemed to fade.