By Scott Gilfoid:
IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is currently waiting for an official response from WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders’ management for an offer they made to Saunders for a fight that they would like to take place in April.
The rumor is that Saunders was offered $4 million for the fight, which is not quite the amount that he wanted. Saunders says he 4 million pounds to fight Golovkin. That’s over $6 million in U.S money.
“Looks like April. We’re waiting on the response to an offer to Saunders for a unification fight,” Loeffler said to RingTV.com. “We won’t know until we receive the response to our proposal.”
Saunders and his promoter Frank Warren gave an interview yesterday in saying that they’ll be meeting in this week or next week to discuss which direction they want to go in. They had a lot to say, and it didn’t seem like they were leaning in the direction of taking the Golovkin fight.
Even an offer of $4 million would an almost unheard of amount of money to be offered to a guy like Saunders in my view, because for him to get that kind of money, Golovkin would need to fight Saunders on HBO pay-per-view to justify that kind of money for the British fighter, and I don’t think a fight between them would sell at all.
If Golovkin vs. David Lemieux wouldn’t sell, then no way in the world could you sell a fight between Golovkin and Saunders. It would be like Golovkin fighting the light hitting Willie Monroe Jr. Yeah, the fight would do well on regular HBO, but how in the heck do you sell a fight between Golovkin and an obscure fighter like Saunders in the U.S? You don’t.
“He [Golovkin] also said on his website [Twitter] me in April and Canelo afterwards,” Saunders said to IBFL TV. “No fighter in the world can overlook me. If anyone overlooks me, I’ll beat him on the night. No one can overlook me, ever. I’m not a stepping stone, and I’m not an easy walk in the park for no one. I’m one of the best middleweights in the world. Now I’ve proved it. Now that I’m world champion, I’m not going to start picking people that will be an easy fight. I want to test myself. I want to see where I’m at. The only way I’m going to prove it is getting in these tough fights and putting myself on a pedestal and see if I’m up there with Golovkin,” Saunders said.
I think it’s safe to say that Golovkin can overlook Saunders and still wipe the deck with him without any problems. The talent difference between the two is just incredible in my view. I would venture to guess that some of the guys that Golovkin recently beat would defeat Saunders. I think Monroe Jr. would beat him, as would David Lemieux. Heck, even Curtis Stevens would likely do a number on Saunders. Stevens wouldn’t have been dropped on his backside from the weak right hand that Saunders hit Lee with, that’s for sure.
Saunders is definitely one of the best middleweights in the world, I’ll give him that. But I don’t see him as being top 5. I rate Saunders behind this bunch of middleweight: Golovkin, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Daniel Jacobs, Peter Quillin, Tureano Johnson, Arif Magomedov, David Lemieux, Hassan N’Dam, Willie Monroe Jr. and Curtis Stevens. Further, I can see four junior middleweights beating Saunders, possibly even five. I think these guys all beat Saunders if they were to move up from 154: Jermall Charlo, Erislandy Lara, Jermell Charlo, Dementrius Andrade and Austin Trout. Julian Williams would be a problem for Saunders too.
“I would not take this fight and say I can’t beat him when I get in the ring. I’ll train to beat him. On my night, I’ll create problems for any middleweight in the world,” Saunders said about Golovkin.
It’s nice that Saunders doesn’t want to admit that he would lose to Golovkin. That makes sense, but I think in the back of Saunders’ mind, he would be telling himself that he’s really up against it. Never the less, even if Saunders told himself that he was going to beat Golovkin, I don’t think it will change anything. He’ll still likely lose badly to Golovkin and become his 22nd consecutive knockout victim.
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