PROMOTER Frank Warren hasn’t, entirely, given up hope of making the Gennady Golovkin vs Billy Joe Saunders fight. The wait has been long but, despite the understandable frustration of limited patience, it remains a significant bout. Golovkin is the holder of the WBC, IBF and WBA titles at 160lbs. Saunders, the WBO middleweight champion, holds the only belt in the division outside of Golovkin’s grasp and the Kazakh has long stated his intention to unify all the titles.
There were moves afoot to match the two in Kazakhstan in June. That has stalled but promoter Frank Warren is still trying to negotiate to keep the fight alive and make it for later this year.
If it can’t happen then Saunders will have to box the winner of Tommy Langford-Avtandil Khurtsidze, who fight for a WBO Interim strap on Saturday (April 22). “It’s been ordered that the winner has to fight him unless he [Saunders] fights Golovkin, who’s injured at the moment, unless we can resurrect that because we had the fight done for June. Unless we can sort that one out. We’re working on that. Then they would give leave for Bill to fight a Golovkin,” Warren explained to BT Sport.
“Look, Khurtsidze was Billy Joe’s mandatory but that fight didn’t happen so I’m happy to do his job for him,” Tommy Langford said. The he suggested, “When I win, I’ve as much of a claim to being the full champ as Billy Joe!”
