Britain’s unbeaten WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders appears to be on the verge of announcing a massive unification showdown with Kazakhstan’s unbeaten WBA, WBC and IBF champion Gennady Golovkin, providing ‘triple G’ beats Daniel Jacobs this Saturday.Saunders’ promoter Frank Warren wrote in his column for BoxingScene last week that both he and Saunders will be ringside for the Golovkin-Jacobs fight, thus sending the already-active rumour mill for this fight into overdrive.
In December, Saunders made a less-than-convincing first defence of his WBO crown against Russian challenger Artur Akavov. This victory, which came after almost an entire year of inactivity, put an end to a frustrating period for the 27-year-old.
As a result of Saunders’ lacklustre 2016, the WBO declared he would have to face two mandatory challengers in his next two fights, the first one being the dangerous Georgian Avtandil Khurtsidze. On February 6, the WBO announced an extension of negotiations for Saunders v Khurtsidze; with a purse bid set to take place on February 9 should no deal be reached.
February 9 passed and we heard nothing.
Then, almost three weeks later, Frank Warren announced that another of his middleweights, Tommy Langford, who is also ranked highly with the WBO, would now be facing Khurtsidze instead for an ‘interim’ WBO belt. This suggests a deal was reached which satisfied both Saunders and Khurtsidze, freeing up Saunders to pursue another fight. You can guess which one.
On March 6, the less than subtle Saunders decided to do a public video livestream on Periscope to answer questions from fans. When asked about fighting Golovkin, Saunders replied that he would be facing the Kazakh, “very, very, very, very, very soon.” And when asked what date his next fight would be announced he answered, “the 18th of March”. That’s the date on which he’ll be ringside at Golovkin-Jacobs.
Unless we’ve all been the victim of a massive wind up here, it looks like our very own Billy Joe Saunders is set to take a massive step up in class and face Gennady Golovkin for the chance to become the undisputed (WBA/WBC/WBO/IBF) middleweight champion of the world. That is if Daniel Jacobs doesn’t upset the applecart by beating Golovkin on March 18.
As for the supposed date and venue for the fight, very little has been spoken about publically. It has been rumoured that the plan is for the fight to take place in Golovkin’s home country of Kazakhstan on June 10, in order to tie in with the opening night of the EXPO 2017 event taking place there this year. This is far from concrete.
All signs are pointing to Golovkin v Saunders next and it sounds like we can expect Frank Warren and his man to step up into the ring at Madison Square Garden and announce this fight should Golovkin defeat Jacobs on Saturday. But then again, this is boxing after all and nothing is certain.
Read more at Billy Joe Saunders looks set to face Gennady Golovkin in unification mega fight if GGG beats Danny Jacobs | talkSPORT
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