By Scott Gilfoid: Avtandil Khurtsidze (33-2-2, 22 KOs) sent a lightning bolt through the British boxing community last Saturday night with his devastating 5th round knockout win over Tommy Langford (18-1, 6 KOs), and now he’s ready to fight for a world title against WBO middleweight strap holder Billy Joe Saunders (24-0, 12 KOs) next on July 8 in London, England. Khurtsidze’s promoter Lou Dibella says Saunders seemed “worried” after hearing of the news of how Langford was blasted out by his fighter in their fight last weekend.
I got the sense of how worried Saunders was at the Khurtsidze-Langford post-fight press conference when he started taking verbal shots at the polite and mild-mannered Khurtsidze, saying he looks like Danny Devito, and saying that he has a big nose. Khurtsidze say much in response to Saunders’ verbal barbs other than to point out that he looks fat. This is obviously true. Saunders looked very, very heavy last Saturday night.
I don’t know what he’s been eating for him to get this flabby looking since his last fight against Artur Akavov last December. Whatever Saunders is eating or drinking, he needs to back off and start focusing on weight management. A professional athlete like Saunders can’t afford to let himself go the way he does in between fights. With a nice fish diet year round, Saunders would always be ready to start training camp without turning it into a fat farm to burn off blubber.
“No disrespect to him but I will show you what he is when I fight him,” said Saunders to Fightnews.com about his fight against Khurtsidze on July 8. ”All he is to me is a puffed up Danny De Vito coming forward throwing punches. He will never beat me ever and I will make him look stupid. Tommy should have got on his feet and made him miss and made him pay.”
Saunders had to be kept apart from Khurtsidze at the post-fight press conference last Saturday night when he tried to get at him while hurling insults about his looks. Saunders looked very worried, and in need of an edge. By going after Khurtsidze, Saunders appeared to be trying to intimidate enough to where he wouldn’t attack him when the two of them fight each other in less than 3 months from now. Sadly, I don’t think Saunders’ intimidation attempts will work for him.
If Khurtsidze was wet behind the ears, and a young fighter with no self-confidence, then Saunders’ primitive intimidation tactics might work. But we’re talking about a 37-year-old man in Khurtsidze. He’s not a young fighter. He’s been around the block, and he obviously knows that Saunders isn’t a puncher with his 50% knockout percentage.
About the only thing that Saunders can do is try and box, hold and run from Khurtsidze on July 8. In other words, Saunders will likely use the same game plan that Langford and Hassan N’Dam used in their fights against Khurtsidze. It barely worked for N’Dam in him beating Khurtsidze by a VERY CLOSE 12 round unanimous decision in 2010 in a fight that took place in France. The judges scored the fight 117-111, 115-114 and 115-114 in favor of N’Dam. I saw that fight and I had Khurtsidze winning. However, he was the visiting fighter fighting N’Dam in his adopted country of France. I didn’t figure that Khurtsidze would get the nod if the fight were close at all. The thing is, Khurtsidze has improved a great deal since then. He’s getting great sparring in fighting out of Brooklyn, New York, and he’s a far better fighter now than he was back then.
Saunders is really up against it in facing a knockout artist like Khurtsidze, because he brings his own judges with him to his fights in the form of his 2 fists. Khurtsidze is not going to allow the judges to have a say so against Saunders, so it really doesn’t matter that the fight will be taking place in his neck of the woods in the UK. Khurtsidze plans on knocking Saunders out to make sure the judges don’t have a chance to score the fight.
I think Saunders is wrong to negate the obvious talent and punching power of Khurtsidze. He’s already proven that he has major league punching power in his knockouts of Langford and Antoine Douglas. Khurtsidze hit both of those guys with major shots.
Khurtsidze was one of the sparring partners for former WBA World middleweight champion Danny Jacobs to get him ready for his fight last March against Gennady “GGG” Golovkin You can argue that Jacobs is a far better fighter than Saunders, and much more dangerous. For Khurtsidze to have been able to spar Jacobs, it was great experience that will help him immensely against Saunders. I would have liked to have seen the sparring sessions between Jacobs and Khurtsidze. I can imagine some huge rockets being thrown by both guys during those sessions.
For whatever reason, Saunders has had stamina problems in a number of his fights in the last 3 years. He ran out of gas in the second half of his fights with Chris Eubank Jr., Andy Lee and Artur Akavov. My guess is all the weight that Saunders had to burn off to get to the 160 pound limit might have drained him for each of those fights, leaving him only capable of fighting hard for the first 6 rounds. I hate to say it, but Saunders IS NOT going to beat Khurtsidze if all he can do is fight hard for 6 measly rounds. You’ve got to do better than that against an all-out pressure fighter like Khurtsidze, because this is a guy that never stops coming for a second. Khurtsidze keeps pressuring his opponents from the first until the last round.
The body shots that Khurtsidze was hitting Langford with in the first 4 rounds seemed to take the steam out of him. In the 5th, Khurtsidze caught Langford with a left hook to the head that put him down on the canvas. Langford looked shaken and badly hurt when he got back to his feet to try and resume fighting. The referee took one look at Langford’s vacant eyes, and he immediately stopped the fight. Langford would have been helpless against Khurtsidze if the fight had been allowed to continue. It would have been horrifying to see what Khurtsidze would have done to a defenseless Langford if the fight had been allowed to continue.
Khurtsidze can ruin Saunders’ dreams of fighting Gennady Golovkin in a big money fight. A knockout loss for Saunders against Khurtsidze will pretty much end any chance of him EVER getting a fight against Triple G or Saul Canelo Alvarez. A career-shattering KO loss to Khurtsidze would make it totally unnecessary for Golovkin and Canelo to fight Saunders.
Right now, the only thing Saunders has going for him is his World Boxing Organization 160lb strap. Once he no longer has the WBO title, he becomes just another fighter. Heck, if Golovkin and Canelo want an interesting contender to face, they could select someone like Chris Eubank Jr. to. I’m sure there will be a huge demand for Eubank Jr. in the near future. That’s why Saunders MUST beat Khurtsidze so that he has that WBO title that he use as bait to lure Golovkin and Canelo into fighting him.