Hearn wants Billy Joe Saunders vs. Danny Jacobs

By Boxing News - 12/17/2017 - Comments

Image: Hearn wants Billy Joe Saunders vs. Danny Jacobs

By Tim Royner: Eddie Hearn is reportedly open to making a fight between Billy Joe Saunders and Danny Jacobs for 2018, but his only concern is how the money would be work out, according to news reports.

Saunders is riding high right now after his master class performance last Saturday night in dealing former IBF 160lb champion David Lemieux (38-4, 33 KOs) a bitter defeat in front of his own Canadian boxing fans at the Place Bell in Laval, Canada. Saunders-Lemieux was viewed as a 50-50 match-up going into the fight, but Saunders proved to have way too much talent for Lemieux.

Jacobs will likely need to give Saunders the lion’s share and then some of the revenue for him to show interest in a fight of this nature. Saunders is in an advantageous position where he can just sit and wait on the winner of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin winner if he wants to. There’s no risk for Saunders in just and waiting for that fight to get done. There’s a lot of risk for Saunders if he takes the fight against Jacobs. He could very well lose and miss out on his payday of a lifetime against the Canelo-Golovkin winner.

Hearn would need to work with Saunders’ promoter Frank Warren for the Saunders vs. Jacobs fight to get made. More importantly, there would need to be interest on Saunders’ part to want to fight Jacobs.

Saunders have never been vocal in the past in asking for a fight with Jacobs. You can bet that if Jacobs had been offered a fight with Saunders in the past, he would have taken it. Since winning the WBO middleweight title in 2015, Saunders has been preoccupied with fighting lower level contenders in Artur Akavov and Willie Monroe Jr. instead of dangerous contenders like Jacobs. That kind of match-making suggests that Saunders might not be keen on facing a live threat like Jacobs. The WBO ordered Saunders to fight Lemieux. This wasn’t a voluntary defense by Saunders last Saturday.

Jacobs (33-2, 29 KOs) has already made it known to the boxing world that he wants to fight Saunders (26-0, 12 KOs).

To get the money to work for a Saunders vs. Jacobs fight, they would need to start hyping the fight now to get the boxing public excited enough for the contest to be pay-per-view in the UK. Jacobs is now under contract with HBO in the U.S. They might be interested in paying extra for a fight between Jacobs and Saunders.

The way that Lemieux was beaten by Saunders, it might not be a good deal for HBO. They just signed Jacobs. It would be a bad for the network if Jacobs gets beaten in the same manner as Lemieux did. HBO would be stuck with Jacobs for the remaining fights they have for him under the contract, unless they have an escape mechanism that would allow them to opt out if he starts gets beaten badly by someone. It might be too risky for Jacobs to take the fight. He could make good money waiting on a fight against Golovkin or Canelo at some point in the future.