By Scott Gilfoid: Billy Joe Saunders (23-0, 12 KOs) turned down a fight against Gabriel Rosado for the undercard of the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Liam Smith card for September 17. By doing so, Saunders appears to have been taken out of the running for a fight against Canelo for December. Golden Boy Promotions was interested in matching Saunders against their Golden Boy fighter Rosado on the Canelo-Smith card in order to possibly build up a fight between Canelo and Saunders for December.
Golden Boy still hasn’t given up on the idea of matching Rosado against Saunders for December if he’s willing to take the fight then. If not, then it’s unclear whether Saunders will ever get a fight against the popular Mexican star Canelo.
I’m not sure if it’s a conditional thing with Golden Boy that Saunders faces their fighter Rosado first in order to earn the fight against Canelo, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. As such, it looks like Saunders will get another chance to earn the Canelo fight in December against Rosado. It might be in Saunders best interest to take that fight if he wants the match with Canelo.
“Even though Saunders won’t be on the Sept. 17 card, we have not closed the door to still trying to make the fight [Saunders vs. Rosado for December,” said Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. ”I’m not sure what else Saunders wants to do, but this was a great opportunity, and Frank knew it. Anyway, the fight with Canelo could still happen at some point.”
This is so, so sad. Saunders turns down a fight against the hard hitting Rosado and now he may have blown his chance for a big money fight against Canelo. Rosado sees Saunders reluctance to fight him as a sign that he lacks confidence to fight him. When you look at the guy that Saunders was previously scheduled to fight for last April, Max Bursak, it would seem that he’s looking for a softer target than Rosado. A fight against the 30-year-old Rosado (23-9, 13 KOs) would be a real because this guy can punch.
Yeah, Rosado has lost four out of his last seven fights since 2013, but he lost to very good fighters that would likely beat Saunders without any problems. The guys that beat Rosado were Gennady Golovkin, Peter Quillin, Jermell Charlo and David Lemieux. Rosado also had a 10 round no contest against J’Leon Love that he lost, but the fight results were overturned after Love tested positive for a banned substance. Rosado has looked good in his last two fights against Joshua Clottey and Antonio Gutierrez in beating both of them by 10 round decisions.
The fact that Golden Boy is only asking Saunders to fight Rosado is them doing him a favor by helping him build up his image in the United States. You can’t very well have Canelo fighting a no name in Saunders after he beats up some stumble bum lined up for him on the Canelo vs. Smith card. I mean, Saunders has to fight a guy with a pulse at least, right? It’s not as if Golden Boy is asking Saunders to fight the tough as nails Tureano Johnson. I could understand Saunders saying no to a fight against Johnson, because that would be a nightmare for him. Honestly, I can’t see Saunders ever beating someone like Johnson or even David Lemieux. Golden Boy could have insisted that Saunders fight one of those two.
According to Rafael, Saunders also turned down Willie Monroe Jr. and Curtis Stevens. Those are both contenders in the 160lb division, and both of them were knocked out by Golovkin just as Rosado was. Saunders likes to put himself on the same pedestal as Golovkin as being an unbeaten world champion at middleweight. Well, this is Saunders’ chance to show that he’s on the same level of GGG by taking on Rosado and proving he can beat him too. Golovkin knocked out Rosado in the 7th round three years ago in 2013.
The fight was mostly easy for Golovkin until the 5th round, when Rosado started landing some big shots. He bruised both of Golovkin’s eyes in that round with his hard shots. However, Golovkin hurt Rosado in the 6th round with a hard right uppercut to the head. Rosado spent the remainder of the round running from Golovkin. The fight was halted in the 7th due to Rosado taking one-way punishment. If Saunders wants the Canelo fight and if he truly believes he’s in the same league as Golovkin, then he should take the fight with Rosado and be thankful that Golden Boy isn’t insisting that he fight Tureano Johnson.
“From what I hear, [Billy Joe] Saunders wanted an easier fight. They didn’t want to fight me. The WBO champ [is] acting like a coward,” said Rosado via ESPN.com.
Coward, is it? Oh my, Rosado calling Saunders a coward for rejecting a fight against him. If those aren’t fighting words then I don’t know what is. Saunders should take the fight with Rosado just for that comment alone so that he can shut Rosado’s trap up and quiet the boxing fans, many of which believe Saunders ducked the fight against the hard hitting Puerto Rican fighter.
Here’s the way I see it: if Saunders is more than just a six-round fighter like some boxing fans think he is, then he should take the fight with Rosado, prove that he can whip him in front of the entire world in the co-feature bout on the Canelo-Smith card next month, and then look to get the payday against Canelo in December. Believe me, there’s a lot of good clean cash for Saunders to scoop up in a fight against Canelo in December. Wouldn’t it be a good Christmas present for Saunders to get a career high payday fighting Canelo at that time?
Of course, Saunders would need to be able to fight hard for more than just six rounds if he wanted to be able to beat a talent like Canelo, because he’s not going to be able to defeat Canelo by fighting hard for the first six rounds and then fading badly in the second half of the contest like he did in his last fight against Andy Lee and in his 2014 fight against Chris Eubank Jr. To beat Canelo, you’ve got to be able to fight hard for 12 rounds, otherwise you get whipped silly.
“We tried to make it happen. We offered him reasonable opponents, and he said no,” said Gomez about Saunders in him rejecting the Rosado fight. “We thought it would have been great to have Saunders and Canelo on the same card before a possible fight between them. But now we are moving on.”
Well, Saunders needs to figure what he wants to do, because he would wind up not being able to take advantage of his time as the WBO middleweight champion. Saunders reportedly already turned a career high payday against Golovkin, and now he might have blown his chance for a Canelo fight. The thing is, Saunders could lose to almost any of the contenders in the division in my opinion due to him being a six-round fighter. All his opponents need to beat Saunders is to heat up the pace of the fight in the last six rounds, and they would have a chance of beating him the same way Lee and Eubank Jr. did.