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As much as the boxers themselves, boxing trilogies have long helped frame the epochs of their sport. Rubber matches such as Ali vs. Frazier, Ali vs. Norton, Patterson vs. Johansson, Zale vs. Graziano, and other triptychs determined who was the better of two evenly matched masters of the American martial art.
Last night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, we witnessed a punctuating moment in fistic history, when Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (42-1-2, 37 knockouts) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (58-2-2, 39 knockouts) clashed for the third time, with Alvarez defending his undisputed super-middleweight title.
In September 2017, Alvarez eked out—or perhaps it would be more apt to say, “was gifted with”—a draw. A year later, Alvarez made adjustments and improved but only enough to come away with a hotly contested split decision victory.