{"id":743300,"date":"2026-08-19T20:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T20:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743300\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T20:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T20:26:12","slug":"billy-joe-saunders-names-the-only-fight-that-could-bring-him-out-of-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743300\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Joe Saunders names the only fight that could bring him out of retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former world champion Billy Joe Saunders<\/a> is open to staging a comeback fight, but only if it happens to be against an old domestic foe.<\/p>\n

The slick southpaw last competed in 2021 after losing his WBO super-middleweight title via an eighth-round stoppage defeat to Canelo Alvarez.<\/p>\n

Before that, Saunders had become a two-division world champion but, in truth, his best performances came down at 160lbs, where he dethroned Andy Lee for the WBO strap in 2015.<\/p>\n

The Hertfordshire man then retained his belt with a dominant display against David Lemieux<\/a>, who was dealt a comprehensive boxing lesson in their 2017 encounter.<\/p>\n

Since last stepping through the ropes, though, Saunders has occasionally expressed his interest in rematching Chris Eubank Jr, who he defeated with a split decision victory in 2014.<\/p>\n

While the scorecards would suggest otherwise, it was a fairly convincing win for Saunders, who largely befuddled Eubank with his superior technical attributes.<\/p>\n

Yet the 36-year-old has told talkSPORT<\/a> that he would still entertain a rematch, if only to prove his point and silence Eubank\u2019s protests over their first fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only [man] I would really come out [of retirement] for is obviously Eubank. That is about it, because I know I could go in there without any warm-up [fight] and beat him. Especially after his last performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to go in there and think I\u2019m going to chase this young fighter [or] that young fighter \u2013 [David] Benavidez and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eubank\u2019s last performance saw him suffer two knockdowns and lose a unanimous decision to Conor Benn<\/a> in November, despite winning their first encounter by the same verdict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former world champion Billy Joe Saunders is open to staging a comeback fight, but only if it happens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-743300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}