Gennady Golovkin may give up the IBF middleweight title for his trilogy fight with super-middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez of Mexico in September.

The long-awaited third fight

The IBF has strict rules: if Golovkin moves up in weight, he will be placed in the top 5 of the new division, but his belt might be taken away.

Australian manager and boxing commentator for Fox Sports and Main Event TV, Ben Damon recently replied to a comment on Twitter with an estimate on the prospects of the IBF middleweight championship belt if the Kazakh and the Mexican meet in the second middleweight division.

“Golovkin will need to vacate in order to go up and fight Canelo. So 1 (Falcao) and 2 (Zerafa) would fight for the vacant title,” Damon writes.

Golovkin, a longtime middleweight champion at 160 pounds, had said he felt content in his weight class. But his Mexican rival had announced last year that he was willing to have a third fight on one condition: that they fight at 168 pounds.

Meeting in the middle

Canelo made his own weight jump to light heavyweight (175 pounds) for his upcoming fight on May 7th against Dmitry Bivol of Russia. 

If Alvarez (57-1-2, 39 KOs) beats Bivol (19-0, 11 KOs) on May 7 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, he is expected to drop back down to the super middleweight division to defend his IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO 168-pound championships versus Golovkin on September 17 at a site to be determined.