Gennady Golovkin says Canelo Alvarez should change his name to Amarillo Alvarez ... because the dude is straight-up SCARED to fight him a 3rd time.
(Note for all of our non-Spanish speaking friends, "amarillo" means yellow.)
GGG is set to fight Sergiy Derevyanchenko on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden ... but a lot of people are wondering why he's not gearing up to complete the trilogy with Canelo instead.
So, we asked Gennady ... and he essentially told us his team tried like hell to come to terms for a 3rd fight, but Canelo was ducking the smoke like he was Floyd Mayweather.
"Last time he said 'No,'" Golovkin tells TMZ Sports ... "Everybody push him, he said 'No.' I can't bring him!"
GGG knows EVERYONE wants to see the 3rd fight -- and he was targeting a Sept. 14 matchup ... but Canelo opted to go up in weight and fight Sergey Kovalev instead.
Golovkin says he's getting sick and tired of talking about Canelo -- you can see the frustration in the video -- and ultimately told us, "I don't want to touch his name because it's horrible for boxing, for [the] sport."
Meantime, GGG is focusing on the fight ahead against Derevyanchenko -- who's 13-1 with 10 KOs.
As for GGG's previous 2 fights with Canelo ... the first was scored a draw and the rematch was a razor-thin judges victory for Canelo. However, a bunch of people think GGG won BOTH fights.