By Keith Idec

LAS VEGAS – Frustrated fight fans have wanted to see Canelo Alvarez fight Gennady Golovkin for well over a year.

But when the time came to discuss details for making Alvarez-Golovkin a reality September 16, De La Hoya said early Sunday morning negotiations with Golovkin’s promoter, Tom Loeffler, were “not tough at all.” Alvarez’s promoter estimated after Alvarez’s 12-round domination of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. that it took about two weeks to negotiate a deal for the highly anticipated middleweight title bout between Mexico’s Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) and Kazakhstan’s Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs).

“The Triple-G side is such a pleasure to work with,” De La Hoya said during a press conference at T-Mobile Arena. “My president, Eric Gomez, we wanted specific negotiations and it was easy to make. We negotiated back and forth several times, no big deal.

“These types of fights take a long time to make happen and surprisingly enough, this fight took a couple of weeks to make. Now I did start negotiations a while back and we halted those negotiations out of respect to Chavez and this event. And we halted those for about a month. And then we started negotiating two weeks ago, and it got done a few days ago.”

The official announcement of Alvarez-Golovkin, planned to immediately follow the Alvarez-Chavez fight, was a well-kept secret, a rarity in boxing. Needless to say, Loeffler, managing director for K2 Promotions (Golovkin’s promoter), was very relieved once the final bell rang for Alvarez-Chavez and Alvarez walked away an unscathed winner.

“I’ll tell you, this fight was a long time in the making,” Loeffler said. “As I’ve said in numerous interviews, I’ve been talking to Eric Gomez and Oscar about putting this thing together. They stayed true to their word. They always said, even since last year, that we’d make this fight for September 2017. And here were are, making the announcement.

“There couldn’t be a bigger announcement in the sport of boxing. It wasn’t easy making the fight. It was even harder not announcing the fight before this time here [Saturday night], before it would actually get out, because we didn’t know what would happen in the fight [Saturday night]. We wanna give our respects and congratulations to Canelo and his team. Fought a tremendous fight. Whenever you can shut out a fighter like Chavez Jr., it’s a tremendous performance. So we wanna congratulate him and we look forward to working with Golden Boy and Team Canelo for a tremendous promotion in September.”

The site of the Alvarez-Golovkin fight hasn’t been determined. T-Mobile Arena and the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, are expected to be the primary competitors to host the Alvarez-Golovkin showdown.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.