Billy Joe Saunders SUSPENDED by BBBofC for shocking video

By Boxing News - 03/30/2020 - Comments

By Charles Brun: In the wake of the shocking video of Billy Joe Saunders appearing to condone domestic violence, the British Boxing Board of Control has moved swiftly to suspend his license to fight until they have a hearing on the matter.

The 30-year-old WBO 168-lb champion Saunders (29-0, 14 KOs) was videoed recently training on a heavy bag in talking about how men can control their female mates by hitting them to quiet them down during the coronavirus pandemic.

Not surprisingly, the video has created a firestorm of criticized leveled at Saunders for the things he said and what he seemed to be advising.

With Saunders’ boxing license now suspended and his future status murky, it leaves open the question whether he’ll still be facing WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez in a unification fight in June or later. Canelo can’t afford to spend a lot of time waiting for Saunders’ suspension to expire before fighting.

Canelo and Saunders were initially supposed to fight on May 2, but the coronavirus made it necessary to postpone the contest. As of now, the promoters for the fight haven’t rescheduled the fight, and it’s now unknown if they ever will.

What we could see is Canelo now looking to go straight into a trilogy fight with Gennadiy Golovkin for September as long as the COVID 19 situation has cleared enough for the fight to take place. The fight that DAZN and the boxing world wants to see is Canelo vs. Golovkin in 2020.

Saunders was more of a glorified stay busy option for Canelo, a fight to give him the opportunity to add another title to his collection at 168. It’s believed that Canelo has no desire to unify the super middleweight division entirely, as that would require that he face three tough champions in Callum Smith, Caleb Plant, and David Benavidez.

Although Canelo is an elite level fighter, he’s short at 5’8″ for a super middleweight, and he would be giving away a lot of size against those champions.

The BBBofC said this in a statement via skysports.com:

“The British Boxing Board of Control having considered comments made by Billy Joe Saunders on social media have suspended his boxer’s license pending a hearing under the board’s misconduct regulation, at a time and venue to be confirmed as soon as possible.”

Saunders apologized for his video on social media in making it clear that he would never tell men to hit their domestic partners.

“I would never condone domestic violence and if I saw a man touch a woman I would smash him to pieces myself,” Saunders said on Twitter. “I have a daughter and if a man laid a finger on her it would end well. Apologies if I offended any women stay blessed.”