It seems an age since Billy Joe Saunders took the WBO world middleweight title off of Andy Lee.
Last night, in Glasgow, Saunders finally got around to making his first defence, after twice having defences postponed.
His opponent was the competent but hardly world-class Russian Artur Akavov.
Saunders made heavy weather of the fight struggling to get his shots off in the first five rounds and often looking second best to the Russian.
Thankfully, Saunders did pick up the pace in the second half of the fight and took the decision on the score-cards of all three of the judges, with the scores being given as:
? 116 ? 113
? 116 ? 112
? 115 ? 113
The win takes Saunders record to 24 wins with 12 of those coming by way of knockout.
Ahead of the bout Saunders had spoken about a fight with Gennady Golovkin, a fighter many see as amongst the, if not the, best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, but following the poor performance Saunders was honest enough to admit,
‘I should be embarrassed to talk about Golovkin after that performance, but I want that big fight in 2017 to put that terrible fight right.?
Boxing works in strange ways and Saunders may well get his unification fight against the boxer who holds the WBC, WBA and IBF versions of the middleweight title, but he?ll have to perform far better if he is to trouble Golovkin.
Saunders Retains Middleweight Title
