{"id":748668,"date":"2026-08-24T23:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T23:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/748668\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T23:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T23:38:08","slug":"champion-who-retired-after-facing-canelo-says-nobody-would-cause-him-issues-ahead-of-potential-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/748668\/","title":{"rendered":"Champion who retired after facing Canelo says nobody would cause him issues ahead of potential return"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former world champion who shared the ring with Canelo Alvarez<\/a> could be about to make a dramatic comeback to the sport.<\/p>\n

Canelo has spent the past few years campaigning at 168lbs, where he became a two-time undisputed super-middleweight champion<\/a> after overcoming a number of the other titleholders in the division.<\/p>\n

One of those men was Billy Joe Saunders, who Canelo defeated by eighth round retirement back in May 2021 at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.<\/p>\n

Saunders hasn\u2019t competed since that date, but over five years on he has now hinted at making a return<\/a>, and it seems that the current level of competition is one of the things motivating him to lace up the gloves once again.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Talksport<\/a>, Saunders explained how he believes he is still more than capable enough to defeat his rivals, even if he doesn\u2019t fully get back to 100%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something inside me where I don\u2019t want to retire on a loss. I\u2019ll be very honest, I think if I\u2019m 70% of the fighter going back to what I was, boxing ability, IQ, movement, everything else, I don\u2019t see anything around at the minute that I look at and would worry about, but you don\u2019t really know that until the bell goes ding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saunders is a two-weight world champion, having held both the WBO middleweight and WBO super-middleweight titles, but at 36-years-old, he will likely have to make a decision soon on whether or not he does indeed plan on stepping through the ropes again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former world champion who shared the ring with Canelo Alvarez could be about to make a dramatic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-748668","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\/748668","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=748668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}