By Scott Gilfoid: WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (23-0, 12 KOs) is eying a big summer showdown with IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) at Wembley Stadium in London, UK. For that fight to have a realistic chance of taking place, Saunders will need to successfully defend his WBO title next month against #11 WBO challenger Max Bursak (32-4-1, 5, 15 KOs) on BoxNation on April 30 at the Copper Box Arena in London, UK.
That shouldn’t be a problem for Saunders, but you never know. Saunders can’t punch and he’s really little more than a six-round fighter. We’ve seen Saunders’ lack of stamina at play recently in his fights against Chris Eubank Jr. and Andy Lee.
It doesn’t look like the 26-year-old Saunders is improving in the stamina department unfortunately, and you have to figure that this is going to be a career-long thing for him.
If anything, I see Saunders’ stamina getting worse as he hits his early 30s, and eventually it’ll likely keep him from doing much with his career. As for Golovkin, he’ll need to win his upcoming fight against challenger Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KOs) on April 23 for him to move forward for the Saunders clash.
There’s no point in Golovkin fighting Saunders if he can’t beat Wade. The Golovkin-Wade fight will be shown on HBO Championship Boxing from the beautiful Forum in Inglewood, California.
“Now I’ve become a world champion I’ve grown in myself and grown in my beliefs,” said Saunders. “Nobody is invincible, you only have to look at Tyson Fury who went over and done Klitschko in his back garden. If I could get Golovkin at Wembley Stadium, which would be a massive fight, I’d show the world I can beat the best.”
If the Golovkin-Saunders fight can be made, it’ll be great for the sport. I’m not sure that it’s a fight that will sellout Wembley Stadium. I’m not sure that it’s worthy of a venue like that. It would be worthy of a huge 80,000 seat stadium if Saunders were a draw in the UK.
I just don’t see him as that kind of a draw. I see Saunders as a guy sells out small halls, but not 80,000 seat stadiums no matter who he fights. it would be a pity if they booked Wemley Stadium in London and only 10,000 fans showed up to see the fight. Would good would it be if they have to give away 70,000 tickets to fill the stadium? It would pretty tragic if that were to happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avutPiwY2po&feature=youtu.be
Saunders is correct about his belief that “Nobody is invincible.” However, the example that he used to show that belief was a poor one to say the least. The 39-year-old Wladimir Klitschko lost to Fury not because he was facing a better fighter.
Wladimir lost because he’s not the same fighter that he was years ago. If you look at Wladimir’s fights from 15 years ago, you realize immediately that he would have blown through Fury like a hot knife through soft butter if he were younger. The reality is the only reason the weak-punching Fury beat Wladimir is because he’s over-the-hill at this point in his career. Wladimir in his 20s would have destroyed Fury.
Heck, Wladimir in his first year of his career in 1996 would have made easy work of Fury. Wladimir has lost so much from his game over the years that it’s not funny. As such, Saunders is probably not going to beat Golovkin or even be competitive with him.
Yeah, no fighter is invincible, but Golovkin is as close as you can come to being invincible in the middleweight division and in the sport, period. There are guys in the middleweight division that can challenge Golovkin like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Daniel Jacobs, but thus far they haven’t chosen to face him.
Hopefully, Saunders doesn’t price himself out for the Golovkin fight by asking for a king’s ransom. Unfortunately, I can see that happen. All that took that Saunders will have done about wanting to fight Golovkin will wind up being little more than name dropping on Saunders’ part.
Also on the Saunders-Bursak card are the following fights:
Ovill McKenzie vs. Dmytro Kucher
Ryan Walsh vs. James Tennyson
Tickets priced at £30, £40, £60, £80, £100, £150, £200 are available from See Tickets 0871 230 7148 and www.seetickets.com, Eventim 0844 249 1000 and www.eventim.co.uk, Ticketmaster 0844 8440 444 and www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Comments are closed.