BATTERED... AND BROKEN
Saunders’ eye socket shattered by brutal Canelo
This was not just the infliction of a first defeat. The shattering of a dream. The loss of a world title. The savage beating eventually meted out by the best boxer on earth.
This humiliation in front of the biggest indoor boxing crowd ever assembled in America, as well as a global television audience of millions, will cut Billy Joe saunders to the core — more painful than the fracturing of his right eye socket by saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.
saunders went out of the biggest fight he will ever have on his stool — not his shield. i shudder to contemplate whether he will be able to come to terms with this.
however blinded his eye and agonising the internally bleeding wound, with which his corner forbade him to go back out for the ninth round in the cacophonous AT&T stadium, such a submission is anathema to the fighting culture of the traveller community. Even if you are going to end up in hospital.
saunders came to the ring accompanied by a World War ii recording of sir Winston Churchill famously intoning: ‘We will never surrender.’ how cruel the irony.
To compound his misery, having been jeered into sport’s most spectacular colosseum by 73,000 Canelo fans, he was mocked by them as he sat with a towel over his head while news came of his retirement at the end of round eight.
indeed, promoter Eddie hearn confirmed that saunders was to undergo surgery on injuries which he described as fractures to the orbital area’.
how chastening that many in boxing with this fight-till-you-die mentality were among those who castigated British heavyweight prospect Daniel Dubois for taking a knee when Joe Joyce broke his right orbital bone.
saunders knows he is not the best loved of British boxers. But few will have wished upon him the excruciating fate which awaited him here. Especially since there were moments in this fight when he boxed cleverly and quickly enough to suggest he might trouble Canelo.
Canelo took particular pleasure in forcing the brutal stoppage he had predicted in ‘the eighth or ninth round’. saunders did not so much get under his skin as poke the beast. Not wise. it was almost as if he waited for his appointed moment to finish the job.
saunders had begun working briskly behind the southpaw jab, which fellow traveller Tyson Fury had urged him to employ rather than his familiar Artful Dodger routine. it earned him more rounds on the scorecards than Canelo would have been happy with.
he then gave the four-weight, five-time world champion more of the style problems in mid-fight which Canelo had ‘multiple expected in the early rounds. The hispanic throng were occasionally quieted — until their idol worked saunders out.
Canelo had begun to taunt Billy Joe with imitations of his come-and-get-me beckonings before the eighth. Then the onslaught was unleashed. Thundering body shots had already begun. Now came the crunching right uppercuts and left hooks to the head. The most vital of those smashed into that right eye as saunders tried in vain to swerve away.
Perhaps he could have gone on. Maybe for one last, desperate throw of the dice. But in reality it would have achieved nothing and risked his health.
saunders had done well enough to be closer by my reckoning at the end of the eighth — 77 points to 75 — than on the official judges’ scorecards. But it was never going to be enough.
Canelo was always going to take possession of Billy Joe’s WBO title, to supplement his WBC, WBA and Ring magazine belts as he continues his relentless pursuit of ‘more history’ as the first undisputed super-middleweight ruler.
The last part of that jigsaw will be his target in september as he takes on undefeated iBF world champion Caleb Plant.
But whither Billy Joe. This was his ultimate moment. Without that motivation, can he summon up again the effort of will and sacrifice which brought him to Dallas in peak physical condition? The omens are not good.
Fury, having got off the floor while barely conscious against Deontay Wilder, is still the Gypsy King. saunders the Romany prince has fallen.