By Steve Kim

With it being made clear that the fight between middleweight king, Gennady Golovkin and Saul 'Canelo'Alvarez will not take place in 2016, the focus now turns to who Alvarez will face on September 17th. Word is that WBO 154-pound belt-holder, Liam Smith, will be getting the call for that assignment.

According to Eric Gomez, VP of Golden Boy Promotions, they were interested in doing a fight with the recently retired Manny Pacquiao - but his company was informed that the Filipino superstar was already obligated to fight someone else.

"We're close to finalizing an opponent. We have a short list. We're very close. We'll be announcing it shortly but one of the guys we were interested in was (Manny) Pacquiao. We'd love to do a Pacquiao fight but from what we hear he has a deal to fight Adrien Broner," Gomez told BoxingScene.com.

Canelo (47-1-1, 33KOs) was in action last month, when he knocked out Amir Khan in the sixth round at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. With his second fight of the year pegged in for September, is there any chance that he fights twice more in 2016?

"That's the plan," stated Gomez, who when asked if a rematch with Miguel Cotto was a possibility, answered - "There's a possibility of doing that, there's a couple of other people we're looking at. The thing is we're going to build up to 160. (Alvarez) might do one more fight at 154 and then we'll make a decision after that, whether to go to '60 or not."

So just how binding is this agreement with K2 Promotions to face Golovkin next fall, how good are the chance this fight happens by then?

''It's very good, we had a great meeting with Tom(Loeffler) and we want to work together to make this fight and we have a great relationship and I'm sure from our side we're going to do everything possible to make it happen," promised Gomez.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.