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Kevin Chittenden: British/Commonwealth middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (17-0, 10 KO’s) proved tonight that he’s good enough to beat a domestic level junior middleweight fighting out of his weight class in beating Matthew Hall (25-7, 17 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision at the York Hall, Bethnal Green, London, United Kingdom.
The judges scored it 120-108, 120-109, 119-110. After the fight, Hall said he’s retiring from the sport. He doesn’t want to take punishment needlessly. Someone should have told Hall ahead of time that it’s not a good idea for him to be fighting at middleweight, and definitely not against a fighter like Saunders. The fight was one-sided in every round with Saunders working Hall like he was a punching bag.
By the 4th round one got the sense that Hall wouldn’t make it the distance because he was just taking enormous punishment and not landing much in return. When Hall did land shots, he lacked the power the bother the bigger Saunders. To Hall’s credit, he stuck it out and went the distance, but it’s too bad his trainer didn’t pull the plug on the fight by the 10th round because Hall took a real shellacking in that round.
The referee looked like he was about to stop the fight but he let it continue due to Saunders gassing out. Hall got a break in the 11th because Saunders was too tired to throw any hard punches, but he took in the 12th and it was as ugly as the other rounds.
Saunders’ promoter Frank Warren wants him to move up to 168. It’s hard seeing Saunders making a splash in that division. Warren is talking about wanting to get a world title shot for Saunders in 2014. Even if he stays at middleweight, which won’t be easy because he looks like a super middleweight now, he’s going to have problems against the top guys because he lacks the power and the stamina necessary to compete agaisnt guys like Sergio Martinez, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Peter Quillin, Matthew Macklin, Andre Ward, Carl Froch and Mikkel Kessler. Even George Groves looks to have better tools to succeed at the world level compared to Saunders.
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Other boxing results on the card:
Bradley Skeete pts 10 Peter McDonagh
Billy Morgan pts 6 Dan Carr
John Dignum pts 4 Kieron Gray
Tom Baker pts 4 Jason Ball
Simon Vallily pts 4 Simeon Cover
Paul Butler pts 4 Anwar Alfadli
