Saunders set to return "with fire in his belly"
Billy Joe Saunders' close friend and occasional trainer Ben Davison has told promoter Eddie Hearn that he expects the Hatfield fighter to come back all guns blazing from his crushing defeat at the hands of Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez.
Two-weight world champion Saunders suffered a fractured eye socket during the super-middleweight unification contest with the Mexican on May 8 and was pulled from the fight ahead of the ninth round by trainer Mark Tibbs.
Matchroom's Hearn said: “He had quite a serious operation after his fight, I spoke to him after that but I haven’t spoken to him for the last week or so.
“I spoke to Ben in Las Vegas and he feels he is going to come back with fire in his belly.
“He enjoyed the experience against ‘Canelo’ and felt like he belonged at that level.
“He is going to want to come back and, obviously from our point of view, we’d love to have him on DAZN.
“He has proved he is a world-class, elite-level fighter.”
Hearn confirmed on Thursday that Matchroom Boxing had signed an exclusive five-year deal to air all their fights with streaming giant DAZN.
And he insists that, while there is work to be done, there should be no fears over a lack of exposure for his stable without the might of Sky Sports behind them.
Hearn added: “We have to work harder in the short term to continue to raise the profile of fighters and be smart in our partnerships.
“But the freedom of those partnerships and the ability to use different platforms to share and create content is something we were a bit handcuffed on before.
"A great example of that which took yers and years to do was when Anthony Joshua boxed Wladimir Klitschko and we had that fight night build-up show on BBC that week.
"These are the sorts of relationships that should be very straightforward in terms of creating content and helping to sell the narrative.
"Canelo had his own documentary on the BBC in the week leading up to the Billy Joe Saunders fight.
"So these are relationships that are going to drive huge exposure to our fighters and to fight night.
"The viewership is unlimited. You have the hardcore boxing fan and then the casual audience as well which will be coming to join the party, if you like, for what used to be pay-per-view events but will now be much cheaper.
“When you run a pay-per-view event, you are limiting that audience very harshly for the size of that fighter.
“But this is going to enable us to grow the audience of the bigger fighters as well and is an opportunity to create a better price offering and value for money for subscribers that will in turn lead to a larger viewership of those fight nights.
"If you look at the viewing figures on Sky, these numbers will not be dissimilar at all in terms of Saturday night fight nights."
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