Gennadiy Golovkin conceded that Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez was the deserved winner on Saturday night.
The Kazakh had disputed the results of both their 2017 and 2018 fights, with the first scored a draw and the second in the Mexican’s favour.
2022 saw them move up to super middleweight for their trilogy rematch, and with Canelo the undisputed champion at 168lbs, it was perhaps no surprise that the 40-year-old struggled compared to the younger man.
Speaking after the fight, the middleweight champion acknowledged his rival’s talents and admitted the judges were right to score the fight in Canelo’s favour.
"Everybody knows who is Canelo, everybody knows a bad step, you lose the fight," said Golovkin.
"You lose [from] one punch, you lose the fight. Look at his face, look at my face.
“We're like this because it was a high-level fight because we trained well and we did a very good quality fight. This fight was more tactical, like chess. Today Canelo was better."