Saunders wants tune-ups before Golovkin & Canelo fights

By Boxing News - 12/04/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (24-0, 12 KOs) wasn’t happy with his 12 round unanimous decision win on Saturday night over challenger Artur Akavov (16-2, 7 KOs) in his voluntary defense at the Lagoon Leisure Centre in Paisley, Scotland. Saunders felt that he was poor in the fight, because he had been out of the ring for an entire year. The judges gave Saunders the win by the scores 116-11, 116-112 and 115-113.

I along with a number of boxing fans felt that Saunders didn’t do enough to deserve the win. I scored it a draw. However, if I were to pick a winner between them, I would go with the 31-year-old Akavov, because he was the one who was working harder the entire fight. Saunders was just loafing along the ropes, looking lazy and not willing to work hard for the full three minutes of each round. Akavov lost, but I think he would have won if the fight had been in a different venue.

Saunders, 27, says he wants to take one or two fights before he faces IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin or Saul Canelo Alvarez. The thing is, the World Boxing Organization has ordered Saunders to face back to back mandatory challengers. This means that unless Canelo steps up to become Saunders’ mandatory in his next fight, he’s going to be forced to fight #1 WBO Avtandil Khurtside next. That’s going to be a very tough fight for Saunders, especially if he’s as bad as he was against Akavov.

Saunderes said this to IFL TV about his “win” over Akavov:

When asked if Akavov was a lot tougher than his usual opponents, Saunders said, “Not a lot tougher, no. I had the poorest night in my boxing career, and yet I still won, so there’s two ways of looking at it. But that’s not the performance where you want to go with a Golovkin or a Canelo, because it would absolutely pointless. If you compare that to Andy Lee, it was no comparison. It was an absolute terrible performance. I think I’m going to need another to get the cobwebs off and work on a few things. I went up too big. I took me ages to get it down. I’m having my Christmas as a champion still as a winner. I found it hard in there tonight, and all he was doing was making me miss a bit, coming out there with a stupid little jab to the body and a jab to the head. It wasn’t what he was doing. It was what I couldn’t do. I will always find a way to win. This was his big chance tonight. He brought something he was never going to bring again. That was his absolute best. You can’t get any better for him, and it was my absolute stinking performance ever. But to be honest with it was a bit of a wake-up call. At times I was making him miss and it was so easy. It is what it is. I got the win. It can liven me up to fight the big names, and move on. When I was in there, I knew I was winning. There’s no way you can go in with the elite off that performance. This year for my boxing has been a terrible year. Tonight, I deserved a warm-up fight, but I had to defend. I’m still champion. On my worst night, I can still beat hungry fighters. It shows I’m a champion. That wasn’t me in there tonight. He wasn’t in my class. I can still beat a hungry fighter who was coming for a world title and who was going to give his all. I definitely need one or two [fights] before a big, big fight, a couple of defenses, mandatories. I’ve been ordered to fight two mandatories. So I’ll get my two mandatories out of the way,” said Saunders.

Saunders isn’t going to get anymore tune-ups, because he used up one facing Akavov, and he also sat on his WBO title for an entire year without defending it.

Saunders was a lot better in his fight against Andy Lee compared to the way he was against Akavov, but I think the reason for that was because Lee was having problems taking his shots in the early going. But even in that fight, Saunders looked bad in the last six rounds with the way he gassed out. Lee came on strong to make it close at the end in losing by a 12 round majority decision. The only thing Lee did was fight hard in the second half. Saunders did the rest by getting tired.

Saunders says he had to take off a lot of weight during his training camp for his fight against Akavov. I can’t say I’m surprised by this news. Saunders tends to put on weight after fights. If Saunders is smart, he’ll stay in the gym and not let himself get big before his next training camp. He can’t afford to balloon up in weight for his next fight, because he’s probably going to be facing someone good this time. Heck, we just saw what a fringe contender could do to Saunders with Akavov arguably beating him. Just imagine what Avtandil Khurtsidze will do to him or Canelo. For some reason, the WBO has Tommy Langford ranked at No.2. If that guy is one of Saunders’ two mandatory challengers, it’s going to be too easy for him.