By Jeff Aranow: Former WBA/WBO light middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade (25-0, 16 KOs) says he’d to face middleweight contender Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan (27-2, 19 KOs) in a step up fight at 160 in order to get him ready for a title shot against WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders.
Andrade, 29, says he needs 1 fight to get ready for the size of the 5’11” Saunders, and he thinks O’Sullivan would be the perfect opponent for him to do that.
O’Sullivan, 33, is being mentioned as a possible opponent for middleweight contender Daniel Jacobs (33-2, 29 KOs) for his next fight on HBO on April 28 in Brooklyn, New York. The fight hasn’t been confirmed, but there’s talk that it could happen.
Like Jacobs, Andrade was recently signed by HBO. It’s unclear if there would be more interest on HBO’s part in a Jacobs-O’Sullivan rather than an Andrade-O’Sullivan fight.
“HBO offered me Lemieux. I said I’ll fight him 2 times. They said no,” said Andrade to IFL TV. “I know Billy Joe Saunders will fight me. I think he’s a confident guy that is willing to get inside the ring and put it on the line,” said Andrade.
Saunders isn’t going to fight Andrade. He’s not ranked in the World Boxing Organization’s top 15, and that’s not the fight that he wants. Saunders wants to face the winner of the May 5 rematch between IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez. Saunders has been talking nonstop about wanting to fight Golovkin or Canelo for the past year. Now it looks like Saunders is close to getting his wish, as long as the winner of that fight wants to face him.
Andrade would be a risky detour for Saunders, and he’s not looking to take any significant risks right now. Saunders successfully defended his WBO middleweight title last month in beating mandatory challenger David Lemieux by a 12 round unanimous decision on December 16 in Laval, Quebec, Canada. With the risky fight against Lemieux out of the way, Saunders can take an easy voluntary defense while he waits to see if he can get a fight against the winner of the Canelo-GGG fight.
“Nah,” said Andrade, when asked if he’d be interested in fighting Saunders next. “I’d like to fight one more fighter, and then take a fight with him. If I get a fight in February, the guy that was on the card would be a great fight,” said Andrade in talking about Gary O’Sullivan. “O’Sullivan, the guy that knocked out the Douglas kid,” said Andrade. “That would be a great action-packed fight for me. He’d force me to let my hands go. I think it would be a great fight. It would be a good step up fight for me for a middleweight. If there’s a whole lot of money on the line, I’d fight anybody, but I’d like another fight to get a little sharper. Saunders is a big dude. For me to beat a big dude, I need to put on a little more weight,” said Andrade.
Andrade could get a fight against Saunders one of these days, but that’ll likely happen after he’s been beaten by Canelo or Golovkin. Saunders won’t fight anyone with talent until he gets a fight against Canelo or Golovkin. The only way Saunders fights a good opponent like Andrade is if the WBO orders him to tale the fight, and they’re not going to do that right now.
