By Scott Gilfoid: For boxing fans still interested in seeing WBO middleweight title holder Billy Joe Saunders make his first defense of his title against little known #10 WBO fringe contender Artur Akavov, they’re going to need to wait another week, as the fight has been scheduled from November 26 to Dec.3
The Saunders-Akavov fight was supposed to be taking place at the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff on Saturday. Instead, it will be fought at the Lagoon Leisure Centre in Paisley, Scotland. This obviously isn’t good news. As for the reason for the postponement, there was delay in receiving paperwork from the 30-year-old Akavov.
The paperwork came over in Russian and needed to be translated. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t enough time to get a replacement opponent to fill in for Akavov. They would have to find another contender, and that would be impossible on a week’s notice.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been an entire years since the 27-year-old Saunders captured the World Boxing Organization middleweight title last year in beating champion Andy Lee by a narrow 12 round majority decision on December 19. It was thought that Saunders would have at least defended his WBO title twice if not three times by this point in time, but unfortunately he still hasn’t defended it. Saunders hasn’t gone over one year yet since he defended the belt, but he’s very close to that.
It’s unclear whether the WBO will allow Saunders to keep postponing fights if his fight with Akavov gets postponed yet again. You would have to think that at some point the WBO is going to need to do something if Saunders keeps at it with the postponements and/or cancellations, especially if it goes past December. We’ve seen the WBO strip champions in the past when they’ve failed to make a title defense during a one-year time frame.
Saunders is on the verge of going over that one year time frame if he gets another postponement or cancellation.
Saunders ha a cancelled defense for a fight that was scheduled against fringe contender Max Bursak on April 30 at the Copper Box in London, UK. Saunders suffered a hand injury, and had pull out of that one. At the time, Saunders complained, “I’m bitterly disappointed. This is boxing and these things happen.”
There was talk of Saunders fighting on the undercard of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Liam Smith card on September 17 of this year on HBO pay-per-view at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. According to Golden Boy Promotions vice president Eric Gomez, Saunders had turned down the opponents offered to him for the fight date.
The opponents that were reportedly offered were Gabriel Rosado, Curtis Stevens and Willie Monroe Jr. It’s unclear why Saunders would turn down those guys, especially when you see who he’s fighting now in little known Artur Akavov. I’m just saying. I think Rosado, Stevens and Monroe Jr. are better known than Akavov. You could say the same thing about them being better known than the likes of Max Bursak. Why would Saunders turn down a fight against one of those guys? The visibility that Saunders would have gotten by fighting on the undercard of the Canelo-Smith fight would have been huge! Further, it would have helped build up a potential fight between Saunders and Canelo for early 2017. It would have been excellent news for a lot of Saunders boxing fans. Golden Boy Promotions were setting it up for Saunders to make a name for himself in the U.S. In looking at how bad Curtis Stevens was in his last fight against James De La Rosa last Saturday night, it’s hard not to imagine Saunders out-boxing him with ease if he’d faced him on the September 17 Canelo vs. Smith fight card. I think that was a lost opportunity for Saunders.
Even if Saunders eventually does face Canelo in early 2017, it would helped make that fight a heck of a lot bigger if Saunders had been seen before by the U.S boxing fans fighting the likes of Stevens, Monroe Jr. or Rosado on the September 17. Monroe obviously would have been a difficult opponent for someone like Saunders, so I don’t blame him for not taking that fight. I think that would be a 50-50 fight for Saunders. He’s not good enough to be a guaranteed winner over someone like Monroe. But I think Saunders would definitely beat Rosado and Stevens as long as he didn’t get clipped by something.
Before today’s postponement, Saunders was also previously scheduled to fight Akavov on October 2 at the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff on BoxNation. Unfortunately, Saunders experienced a muscle injury requiring his fight with Akavov to be postponed until November 26. For some reason, Saunders has just had a TON of bad luck when it comes to making his first defense of his WBO 160lb title. Saunders turning down the opponents offered to him for the Canelo-Smith card on September 17 wasn’t because of bad luck.
For some reason, Saunders didn’t choose those fighters. But the other postponements have been disappointing news. Hopefully, Saunders doesn’t cancel yet again, because it’s forlorn at this point. I almost feel that Saunders was better off before he won the WBO title, because he at least was fighting on a regular basis. Since Saunders won the WBO title, he’s lost a year of his career. Fighters don’t have long boxing careers. When you see a fighter lose an entire year in the prime of their careers, it’s sad, because they’re not going to get that year. Who knows if Saunders will be the same fighter that he once was when he does come back. Look at Andre Ward. He’s not the same fighter he once was after missing two years of his career. It might be the same thing for Saunders.
Saunders said this about his postponement for the Akavov fight:
“I was ready to put on a big performance and defend my title in style in Cardiff but unfortunately this latest issue was totally out of our control,” said Saunders. “The fight is still on, that’s the main thing and I’ll be fully prepared to defend my title in Scotland next week before moving on to a blockbuster fight in 2017.”
I wonder what blockbuster fight Saunders is talking about in speaking about his fight in 2017. It looks like Saunders is counting on getting the likes of Canelo or Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. I just hope for Saunders’ sake that he doesn’t price himself out of those fights, because I don’t see him getting either of them if he asks for too much money.
Canelo would be Saunders’ best option for a big payday, because he can fight him on HBO pay-per-view, even though a fight between them wouldn’t be a pay-per-view worthy fight. Canelo seems to be willing to fight almost anyone on pay-per-view nowadays, and his deteriorating numbers suggest that the boxing fans aren’t too pleased about it.
Golden Boy would be better off being a little more selective about the opponents they pick out for Canelo in terms of PPV fights on HBO. Picking guys like Liam Smith and putting that on PPV is not a good way of building Canelo into a star. That should have been on regular HBO in my view. The same goes for Saunders. If Canelo fights him, he should fight him on regular HBO, because he’s not well-known in the U.S. It doesn’t matter if he’s a belt holder or not. The casual fans don’t have clue one who Saunders is, and they won’t care that he’s a world champion. Heck, the middleweight division is so watered down with all the different world titles, it loses it’s meaning to be a world champion.