By Scott Gilfoid: WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (23-0, 12 KOs) says he’s going to come over to the United States and whip Mexican fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s backside in the near future after he gets done with his title defense against challenger Artur Akavov (16-1, 7 KOs) on October 22 at the Motorpoint Arena, in Cardiff, Wales.
Saunders sees Canelo as flawed and vulnerable, and he wants to hand him another loss on his record. Saunders also wants to fight unbeaten middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin as soon as possible too. Saunders’ promoter Frank Warren says he’d like to have him fight Canelo first and then Golovkin under ideal circumstances.
Saunders would n/eed to beat one of them to have a chance to get the other. It’s not going to work if Saunders gets whipped by Canelo, and then starts yapping about wanting to fight Golovkin. I mean, Saunders can yap away all he wants, but I think he’s going to get ignored. Once Saunders no longer holds the World Boxing Organization 160lb title, he’ll be pretty much a nonentity for Golovkin and Canelo.
Saunders isn’t well known in the United States, so it kind of doesn’t help Canelo and Golovkin to royally thrash him in front of the American fans, because there’s nothing to be gained from it. If Canelo and Golovkin want punching bags to beat up on, there are plenty of them go around. They don’t need to import one from the UK to work over like Saunders.
Saunders is useful right now while he’s the WBO strap holder, but then he’ll be null and void after he loses the strap. Saunders’ 15 minutes of fame will be over. As the late painter Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.” Well, Saunders’ 15 minutes of short-lived fame will be dust once he loses to Canelo or Golovkin.
That’s why he needs to milk it for all it’s worth right now while he still holds the WBO middleweight strap. If I was Saunders, I would be name dropping Canelo and Golovkin’s name 24/7. Heck, I’d be talking those guys up even in my sleep so I could get attention to my mismatch against little known #11 WBO contender Artur Akovov. Goodness knows, the Saunders-Akovov fight needs as much attention it can get.
Saunders said to Fighthype.com:
“A big, big shout to my American fans; I hope you all turn out when I cover over there and whip Canelo’s [expletive], because he’s not American. He’s Mexican. We do know that us Brits and Americans stick together at certain times. Each time Canelo fights, you can pick more faults out of Canelo. Personally, I believe I beat Canelo seven times a week, and twice on Sundays. He’s a good fighter. He’s a good inside fighter, but I think he struggles against someone with a good boxing brain, and I think my style is all wrong for him, all wrong. I don’t think they’ll be keen on that fight personally. Golovkin to me is the better fighter.”
Yeah, I think Canelo is going to have his finger prints all over Saunders soon. Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy are going to likely snatch Saunders up quickly for a title shot against him, and they’ll get the fight over Golovkin by throwing a nice little money offer. Golden Boy can offer nice money for the Saunders fight due to them having HBO pay-per-view to help with the offer.
Golovkin won’t be able to fight Saunders on HBO PPV, because no one would be interested in a mismatch like that. Canelo is different. He’s got a HUGE built in fan base in the United States in the California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona areas. I imagine those are the states where Canelo gets most of his pay-per-view buys from his built in fan base.
Golovkin doesn’t have the situation. He’ll need a high quality opponent that is well known to the American fans for him to bring in a lot of PPV buys. If Golovkin ever faces Saunders, which I highly doubt, it will have to be on regular HBO Championship Boxing and not on PPV. However, I doubt that Golovkin will ever fight Saunders once he faces Canelo first and gets knocked out by him.
A loss for Saunders will send him back into the back as just a regular contender and I suspect he’ll be pretty much forgotten completely by Golovkin. He’s got a lot of interesting fight options available to him like Canelo, Daniel Jacobs, Gilberto Ramirez, Chris Eubank Jr., James DeGale, Badou Jack and some of the junior middleweight fighters like the Charlo brothers.
Saunders, 27, needs to make sure he doesn’t get beaten by the Russian Akavov on October 22. There’s no use for Saunders to be blabbering about wanting to fight Canelo or Golovkin if he can’t even get by Akavov. Saunders has been out of the ring for 10 months now, and he’s never had great stamina in the past. I think the chances are high that he’s going to gas out quickly if he doesn’t get a knockout in this fight. Akavov will only need to worry about getting knocked out in the first six rounds, because Saunders gets really tired at the midpoint in the fight. However, this fight is such a mismatch that it’s possible that Saunders will still be able to finish Akavov off in the 2nd half of the contest even if he fades badly.
