The end of the year is in sight and boxing hasn't delivered us much in 2016. In the final three months of the year, only one fight, Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward, is worthy of any sort of fanfare, and the year up until this point has mostly been the same. It has been a particularly frustrating stretch for boxing fans, so it's easy to understand why a major publication like the Los Angeles Times would report that "boxing is dead."

Among various other issues, the sport doesn't seem to currently know which fights are worth paying for and which ones aren't, the heavyweight title has been sidelined for the entire year as Tyson Fury tried to sort his various issues out, and bouts that appear easy to put together still aren't made. That final point has been a thorn in the sport's side for several years.

For more than five years, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao danced circles around one another at the negotiating table, ultimately fighting for a huge amount of money yet well past a time when the fight would have meant the most to both of their legacies. More than one year after they met in a ring, the entire ordeal remains a cautionary tale against allowing meaningful fights to marinate for too long.

While the saga unfolding between Saul "Canelo" Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin is unlikely to last for years, it nonetheless has come along before the sting of the Mayweather-Pacquiao debacle has entirely worn off. That Alvarez and Golovkin have not fought and likely won't be in the near future is like an aggravating sort of deja vu.

What we're left with in the meantime isn't all that satisfying either. With four fights between them in 2016, the two best middleweights in the world have not fought any credible middleweights. Instead, they have fought two welterweights, a super welterweight, and a middleweight fringe contender. As annoying as that is, it's also potentially disconcerting.

According to Dylan Hernandez of the LA Times, boxing appears "destined to remain solely on the fringes of the American sports landscape," and the lack of huge fights like Alvarez-Golovkin is a big reason why.

History demonstrates that boxing has been eulogized many times over, however, making it tougher to kill than Rasputin.

Legendary promoter "Tex" Rickard personally told press more than once than boxing was on the verge of death, then he went on to break a number of box office records with creative and innovative promoting methods. Countless former heavyweight champions, from John L. Sullivan to Rocky Marciano, have bid the sport adieu. Most of them, including a beloved, controversial and universally-renowned Muhammad Ali, are now gone, and yet boxing is still here.

In 1899 William Brady, manager to brand new heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries, traveled to England in search of opportunities for his charge. Upon returing to the U.S., Brady told press, "Boxing is dead in England." Over a century later, Golovkin drew roughly 19,000 fans to O2 Arena in London while facing heavy underdog Kell Brook despite never having fought in the U.K.

The sport has even survived the disapproval of the Catholic Church, which began speaking out against boxing in the 1950s and called the sport "legalized murder" through a Vatican-approved magazine in 2005.

So maybe the sport isn't dead, and perhaps it isn't even in the early stages of catching some fatal disease either, but that doesn't mean those former heavyweight champions would never be proven right. While technically alive, boxing is not exactly flourishing from top to bottom. Apart from a small handful of fighters who can regularly draw tens of thousands of live spectators or millions of viewers, interest in boxing is about as low as it can be for a sport that used to be the most mainstream of them all.

Could it be possible that Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao's combined ability to draw a crowd gave fans and pundits alike a false sense of security when it comes to boxing's popularity and what the future may bring for the sport? Rasputin wasn't easy to kill, but he did eventually succumb to death after multiple attempts at his life.

It's true that boxing has survived numerous calamities already -- from corruption so deep that it required federal intervention in the 1950s, to actual deaths that brought about major rule changes -- but the sport previously had several things working in its favor that helped it bounce back.

From the 1950s to the 2000s boxing was broadcast on mainstream television, and in recent years the sport has struggled to remain on anything but pay cable. Live audiences and local fight scenes have also dwindled, as former hotbeds like Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago and even San Francisco have dried up and no longer put on regular club shows. Finally, professional boxing's farm systems -- the amateur and collegiate systems -- have either disappeared entirely or aren't in great condition. These were all things helping boxing to rebound back into the public consciousness, and all are things of the past.

Boxing's popularity has ebbed and flowed in cycles for decades. It's possible the cycle simply got stuck during a period of ebbing interest, in which case a nudge or even a shove in the way of a series of fantastic events or tournaments could open the floodgates once more. But the sport would do well to prepare for the numbers to be permanently low, just in case.

It's unrealistic and maybe even unfair to unload blame onto Alvarez and Golovkin for the sport's shortcomings. After all, boxing has been on the decline for years and it's not as if the two best middleweights have shameful ledgers. But even in difficult times boxing could generally count on a certain caliber of fights to be made, and it is starting to feel like that isn't the case anymore. Finalizing what is almost certainly the biggest fight boxing can produce right now would be the best step toward a more encouraging end.