Billy Joe Saunders planning April return 11

Badlefthook.com

Promoter Frank Warren tells ESPN that former middleweight titleholder Billy Joe Saunders will be back in April.

“Billy will fight again in early April. The plan is to keep him busy and in big fights. He will box at middleweight. What’s happened is all history and he has to take inspiration from Tyson Fury and how things turned around for him.”

Saunders (27-0, 13 KO) had a very rocky 2018. He was scheduled to face Martin Murray on a couple of occasions, but pulled out of those dates, with many speculating that he was trying to land a bigger fight with Gennady Golovkin or Canelo Alvarez, which fell through when they finally made a deal to meet again in September.

Saunders was then slated to face Demetrius Andrade, but failed a drug test and wound up stripped of his WBO belt. He did return on Dec. 22, stopping journeyman Charles Adamu in four rounds. It was Saunders’ first fight since a domination of David Lemieux in Dec. 2017.

We’ll have to see what Saunders does next and for the rest of 2019, but when he’s focused and on his game, he’s one of the best middleweights in the world, and if he fights regularly, he’s a threat to just about anyone at 160.