BILLY JOE SAUNDERS will fight for the full WBO super-middleweight world title on May 18, when he boxes Shefat Isufi at the Stevenage football ground.
“It’s for the world title, it’s for the full title,” promoter Frank Warren told Boxing News. Victory would restore Saunders to a favourable position in his career. “He’ll have options. He can fight at super-middleweight or middleweight, that’s going to be his choice depending on who’s around,” Warren continued.
It will be interesting to see who is around. With Saunders’ old rival Chris Eubank Jnr securing a good over James DeGale at super-middleweight, that rematch would be appealing. But Warren is convinced that Eubank wouldn’t take it.
“He don’t want it,” the promoter said. “What I don’t understand, they talk a good fight the Eubanks, but whatever way you look at it when he opens that record book it says Billy Joe Saunders loss. The only way he can avenge that is fight him and eradicate that loss. But he’s got no intention, he’s not interested so that tells you all you need to know about him.”
Warren’s hopes of making fights for Saunders with Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin at 160lbs are slim.
“The problem I have is there’s two fighters in particular, Golovkin, they sent us contracts and we signed and sent them back on two occasions. I don’t think they want it and I know that Canelo don’t want it. And that’s the problem,” Warren said.
“So we’ve got to look to make another meaningful fight for him, which we will do. In the meantime the Billy Joe Saunders that fought [David] Lemieux has been out the ring for quite a while now. He’s moving up a weight. He’s still a young man. The Billy Joe that fought Lemieux has got the beating of those two fellas [Canelo and Danny Jacobs] I saw at the weekend.”
