WBO world middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders is just waiting now from Golovkin and his team about a fight this summer.
The Englishman is well and truly on Golovkin’s hit list as ‘GGG’ wants to unify the middleweight division and accomplish a career milestone in doing so.
I’ve always thought that Saunders has the boxing ability to give Golovkin plenty of problems.
But he’ll need to considerably up his game from his last performance to have any chance. As he’d surely admit himself.
In an excellent interview with Kugan Cassius of IFL TV, Billy Joe Saunders said that he is now happy with everything that is on the table for the fight offer with Golovkin, that he’d even fight ‘GGG’ in his home country and that he will accept whatever payment get gets from the fight – promising to give his winnings from the bout to his father.
He also mentioned that he didn’t want to talk about the fight negotiations being so close to be done in the build-up to Golovkin’s fight last weekend against Danny Jacobs out of respect for both fighters.
Who had a job on their hands.
Billy Joe Saunders really does seem like a fighter who needs the ‘big fights’ to get himself motivated if you look back only at his very recent fights.
When you look at his last two performances, the Andy Lee win in December 2015 and the Artur Akavov fight in March 2016 – the performances were almost night and day. Quite literally.
I’ve never seen Saunders look so sharp as he did the night he beat Lee to win the WBO title. You could tell he had the fear factor that night and was bouncing around with some of the best lateral movement in world boxing at the time.
But he’ll need to be like that again and even sharper against Golovkin.
A man who no doubt will also have a fire lit under him after a fight last weekend that showed him to be more vulnerable than ever before.
But credit to Danny Jacobs though, certainly one of the world’s very best middleweight fighters.
As regards Golovkin vs Saunders happening in the summer, it now looks closer than ever.
