Billy Joe Saunders is seemingly out of the running for the May 2 fight against WBA ‘regular’ super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez fight. Golden Boy boss Oscar De La Hoya dismissed the rumors of Saunders (24-0, 14 KOs) being in the lead position for the Canelo fight as false, and he has no clue who started circulating the fake news in the first place.
De Hoya states that he’s going to be taking to Canelo (53-1-2, 36 KOs) and seeing which direction he wants to go in for his fight on Cinco de Mayo on May 2. According to Oscar, Canelo could fight from 160 to 175. He’s got 3 weight classes to choose from. However, he just vacated his WBO light heavyweight title, which suggests that he’s not going to make his next fight in that weight class.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Canelo to move back up to 175 after vacating the WBO belt, which arguably has the weakest line up of contenders vying for the title. Had Canelo kept the WBO belt, he could be looking at possibly defending against Eleider Alvarez, and that’s a guy he would have a good chance of beating.
Saunders’ promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing also has dismissed the talk of Saunders getting the fight with Canelo, calling it “fake news.”
“Saunders is not the frontrunner, that’s for sure. I have no idea who threw that name out there. I have a trip to Mexico [to meet] with Canelo and his team,” said De La Hoya to secondsout. “We’ll sit down, I’ll stay there for a few days, iron out a deal and take it from there. Once we have the name down, we’ll have an announcement shortly,” said De La Hoya.
Poor Saunders. After all these years as a pro, he finally mentioned as a possible option for Canelo Alvarez, but then those hopes were dashed by Oscar in revealing he’s not the frontunner. It was all just a mirage. Saunders appearently isn’t in the lead position to grab the golden ticket for the monstrous payday against Canelo. The way that Saunders looked in his last fight, he’s not going to hold onto his WBO 168 lb title for too much longer.
There’s already a lot of speculation about whether Canelo will choose to take an easy fight against fellow Golden Boy fighter Jaime Munguia (35-0, 28 KOs), who is coming off of a thrilling 11th round knockout win over Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan on January 11 on DAZN in San Antonio, Texas. That was a fight in which both guys were hurt, but Munguia took over with his power in the championship rounds to get the stoppage.
There are two fighters at middleweight that you can rule out entirely for Canelo’s next fight, and that’s IBF middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin and Jermall Charlo. GGG has a title defense in March against his IBF mandatory Kamil Szeremeta. Charlo (30-2, 22 KOs) reportedly turned don a fight with Canelo last year, according to De La Hoya.