Billy Joe Saunders’ next fight to be announced on Monday

By Boxing News - 09/03/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: After sitting idle for the past nine months, World Boxing Organization middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (23-0, 12 KOs) finally will have his next fight announced this Monday by his promoter Frank Warren. There is no word about who that opponent will be, but given that Saunders is in the running for a big money fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in December, it’s quite likely that he won’t be fighting anyone good.

Saunders was supposed to fight little known fringe contender Max Bursak last July, but he suffered a hand injury that wiped that fight out. Saunders was then offered fights against Gennady “GGG” Golovkin, Willie Monroe Jr. and Gabriel Rosado, but he didn’t take any of those fights.

Now it’ll be interesting to see if Saunders faces talented opponent next or if it’ll be a bottom feeder from the WBO’s rankings. It’ll be Saunders’ first defense of his WBO title. It’s just kind of hard to believe that it’s taken Saunders this long to finally be on the verge of defending his title for the first time, because he should have defended the belt a long time ago ideally. Saunders is three months from not having defended his title for an entire year, which is really sad.

“We’re announcing his fight next Monday,” Warren said. “We’ll deal with that Monday.”

The good news is that Saunders will likely face someone from the WBO’s top 15 rankings. What I see is potentially bad is that II can’t see Saunders fighting any of the contenders that I personally rate as good fighters. As such, I see Saunders fighting one of these guys next: #12 Artur Akravov, #13 Ievgen Khytrov, #7 Rob Brant or #5 Max Bursak.

My guess is Bursak will be the one that Saunders ends up facing. I see him as the weakest of the contenders right now. The ones that I cannot see Saunders fighting are from this bunch: Hassan N’Dam, Curtis Stevens, Gabriel Rosado, Andy Lee, Chris Eubank Jr, Maciej Sulecki, Tommy Langford, Ryota Murata and Avtandil Khurtsidze. Some of those guys are busy with their own fights, while others are simply too good for me to see Saunders risking his hide against him. It would likely end badly for Saunders if he fought a good opponent because I see him as too flawed to win.

With Saunders, I don’t see him having the talent to get past many of the top guys in the WBO’s rankings. I’m not even looking at the guys in the other sanctioning bodies’ rankings, because there are just too many decent quality contenders that I believe would do a royal number on Saunders if given the chance. I don’t see them getting a chance.

Yeah, I think Saunders is going to be fighting some dreadful contender in the WBO’s rankings. If you look at the guys that Saunders has faced in recent years, you’ll notice that there’s been a lot of soft jobs he’s been fighting. If you ignore Saunders’ fights against Andy Lee and Chris Eubank Jr, you’re left with fighters like Yoann Bloyer, Emanuele Blanamura and John Ryder. As I was saying, Saunders has fought a lot of soft jobs.

Yeah, unfortunately I think Saunders is looking to take it REAL easy in his next fight and then look to get the cash out match against Saul Canelo Alvarez. I see that being it for Saunders as far as him being a major player in the 160lb division, because Canelo will destroy him of course. Saunders will then be back among the pack of contenders where I never see him emerging again as a world champion.

The problem that Saunders has is there are too many talents in the 160lb division right now, and there are just no easy marks for him to beat to pick up another title again. Saunders got lucky when Andy Lee was there for him to fight for the WBO title. Had it been a decent fighter like Murata, Khurtsidze or David Lemieux, I think he would have lost to them. Believe me, I don’t think those are great fighters, but I do see them as being better than Saunders. They don’t have to be great to beat Saunders. They just have to be decent. The better middleweights like Golovkin, Jacobs and Tureano Johnson would wipe Saunders out in my opinion. I noticed that Saunders isn’t rushing to fight any of them. I wonder why?