It seems Canelo Alvarez could fight Billy Joe Saunders on May 2 after all. As fans know, both Saunders, the reigning WBO super-middleweight champion, and Callum Smith, the current WBA ruler at 168 pounds, last week turned down offers to fight Canelo. But now, as per a tweet from Mike Coppinger, a Canelo-Saunders fight is “about 95 percent there,” with the two sides “determined to finalize a deal this week for a May 2 super-middleweight title fight on DAZN.”
So it seems either Golden Boy improved their offer or Eddie Hearn and Saunders agreed to the first offer they initially turned down. Either way this fight, one the unbeaten Saunders has been calling for for a long time, is closer than ever before. According to Coppinger’s sources, the sole hold-up on Canelo-Saunders being signed, is a “discrepancy with Saunders’ minimum in his contract.”
Let’s hope this can be sorted out. Canelo-Saunders is a very good match-up and of course southpaw Saunders fully believes he has the tools and the style to defeat the Mexican superstar. Can the British traveller score the big upset, and over Cinco de Mayo weekend to boot? Canelo will of course big a big favorite to win, and pick up yet another belt, but if Saunders, 29-0(14) comes in in top shape and is able to perform as sharply and as brilliantly as he did in scoring arguably his career best win over David Lemieux back in December of 2017, then we will have a fascinating fight.
It goes without saying how a Saunders victory would rank right up there with the great “away wins” scored by a British fighter. One thing we know about Saunders is he is totally unfazed when fighting away from home, in the other guy’s backyard. And Las Vegas is really a second home for Canelo. It will be quite the hostile crowd 30 year old Saunders will face if the fight does come off, but Canelo had better not rely on this unsettling Saunders and making his job of defeating him that much easier.
This fight might just end up being one of the hardest, trickiest and most testing of Canelo’s long career. Again, let’s hope it comes off.
