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28th Mar 2017

Billy Joe Saunders’ camp has issued an ultimatum to Gennady Golovkin

Put up or shut up

Darragh Murphy

Billy Joe Saunders isn’t messing about.

The WBO middleweight champion has given one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world, Gennady Golovkin, a deadline to accept their much-discussed unification bout.

Golovkin retained his WBA (Super), WBC, IBF, and IBO middleweight titles with his decision victory over Daniel Jacobs a fortnight ago, a bout which brought an end to the Kazakh fighter’s 23-fight knockout streak via a unanimous decision victory in favour of GGG.

In the wake of that win in Madison Square Garden, Golovkin identified a showdown with Saunders as his “dream fight” and his promoter suggested that the fight could even take place in the United Kingdom.

Saunders got the trash talk started early by referring to GGG as a “little fucking minge!” but there’s not been much in the way of positive updates in terms of the negotiating process ever since.

And Saunders is losing his patience.

The undefeated Brit’s camp has officially given a cut-off point for Golovkin and, if he doesn’t accept by next week, Saunders is going to go in pursuit of a new opponent.

“We are waiting for Tom Loeffler (Golovkin’s manager) and Golovkin to come back to us,” Saunders’ promoter Frank Warren told the Sun.

“Bill is ready to go, he wants the fight, we want the fight.

“But we are not going to hang around forever so we’ve got to put a time limit on it.

“We’re either going to do it this week or we’re not going to do it.

“If we don’t then we will move on to something else. Bill is there, terms are agreed

“We have no problems with any terms for the fight. It is whether they want the fight or not.

“We will hopefully find out this week and hopefully it will be good news for Bill.”