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WBO super middleweight world champion Billy Joe Saunders, and his father Tom Saunders, have created quite a stir with the scheduled unification against WBC, WBA champion Saul “Canelo’ Alvarez.
The fight is scheduled to take place on Saturday night at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Saunders and his father are not happy with the selection of judges and they are threatening to withdraw due to the ring size being a standard 18 feet.
Tom Saunders believes the ring was intentionally made smaller to take away his son’s ability to move around the ring.
In protest, Billy Joe no-showed a scheduled face to face at AT&T Stadium.
“I can’t say them coming face to face because the issue with the ring has still not been sorted. There is nothing in the contract about the ring size, it’s all about negotiations and negotiations have broken down big time,” Tom Saunders told IFL TV.
“Canelo has put an 18 foot ring, which I think is an amateur ring, as the fight ring. His plan was to pout an 18 foot ring there, knowing we were going to start [complaining] and he said right, 20 foot ring, that was his game plan. We wanted a 24-foot ring but we’ve come down to a 22-foot inside ring. Basically they are trying to take BJ’s legs away. We’re up against everything here and at the end of the day I’m not going to let my son box in a 20-foot ring against the supposed pound-for-pound king of boxing.
“We’re up against everything here and we’ve spoken to them this morning. They’ve said it’s either a 20-foot ring or book your flights home. Unfortunately people, we apologise to all the fans, I can’t let my son box in a 20-foot ring against Canelo on Cinco de Mayo weekend. We’ve given into a lot of stuff but this we can’t given in to. The fight will not be fair… the fight’s off.”