Billy Joe Saunders has not fought since Canelo Alvarez broke his eye socket in three places, and he is thinking about coming back.
Saunders told talkSPORT that the way his career stopped is what bothers him.
There is something inside me where I don’t want to retire on a loss. I’ll be very honest, I think if I’m 70% of the fighter going back to what I was, boxing ability, IQ, movement, everything else, I don’t see anything around at the minute that I look at and would worry about, but you don’t really know that until the bell goes ding.
The fight he is referring to was in May 2021 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, in front of an indoor record crowd of 73,126. Canelo landed a right uppercut in the eighth round that caved in the right side of Saunders’ face. His trainer Mark Tibbs stopped it on the stool before the ninth.
Saunders was taken to hospital and had surgery the following day on what doctors described as a quadripod fracture, a complete blowout of the orbital bone, with the eye socket broken in three places. Eddie Hearn said at the time that he would be out for a long time and that there was no guarantee he would fight again.
He has not. Saunders was 30-0 going into that night and is 30-1 now, a two-weight world champion who held the WBO middleweight and super-middleweight titles. He turns 37 on Sunday.
