OVERSHADOWING his rescheduled rematch with Gennady Golovkin is that Canelo Alvarez is serving out a six month suspension for two failed drug tests.

Traces of clenbuterol were discovered in his system in February, which Alvarez has put down to inadvertently eating contaminated beef in Mexico. Ultimately that led to a May 5 fight with “GGG” being cancelled. Eventually Alvarez was handed his six month ban and so the rematch has been pushed back to September 15 in Las Vegas.

The delay has inconvenienced both fighters and reduced to Alvarez to only having one fight this year. But that ultimately is the only punishment, even though an athlete is responsible for the substances found in their body, even if they were taken by mistake.

Former opponents have condemned the light sentence. Alvarez knocked Amir Khan cold in 2016. Khan didn’t box again for almost two years, until the Briton made a low key comeback against Phil Lo Greco in April.

Khan takes a dim view of developments. “At the end of the day, I’m just focusing on my career first and making sure I do everything and I don’t make any mistakes. Look, there are some big names out there in boxing. I’m focusing on them. I’m on my path in boxing and Canelo, whatever he did, he did wrong,” he told Boxing News.

“But I just think it’s wrong for boxing to do that. Because we work so hard and when we work so hard, someone that takes drugs should be banned for good. Should be banned forever. Not only given a sixth month ban.”

Canelo Alvarez

But at this point in his career Khan is cynical. He doesn’t expect the rest of the boxing world to share his view. Khan explained, “Because Canelo’s so big in the business that people are going to respect him, the boxing media are going to back him, the promoters are going to back him. He brings a lot of money to the table. So they want to respect him, they want to keep him in boxing.”