Saunders fight will not be shown by Sky
Sky will not show Billy Joe Saunders’s unification fight with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Promoter Eddie Hearn said last night that the pay-tv giant made no attempt to land one of the biggest bouts of the year, but that it had nothing to with the involvement of an alleged crime figure in helping to broker the contest, which will be shown by DAZN instead.
Broadcasters had been under pressure to “take responsibility” over Daniel Kinahan’s grip on the sport after Saunders last month confirmed the Irishman had “done the deal” for all his world title fights.
The Telegraph revealed last month that Sky had signed up to a United Nations charter that pledges to fight corruption. Kinahan has categorically denied being a member of a murderous criminal gang, having previously been named in court as a head of one. Hearn said Sky had not inquired about showing the May 8 fight because Alvarez had a global deal with DAZN, which had already made clear it would broadcast the Saunders bout in the UK. He said that superseded his own deal with Sky, through which it had shown both of Saunders’s previous World Boxing Council super-middleweight title defences. Sky declined to comment on whether there was a connection between Saunders’s revelation about Kinahan and the UK broadcasting arrangements for the Alvarez fight, with a source simply confirming it had not been offered the bout.
Neale Richmond, a member of the Irish parliament and an arch-critic of Kinahan, said: “It’s simply not good enough for broadcasters to dodge this.”