By Billy Joe Saunders

FIGHTERS ALWAYS TEND to claim ahead of fights that they have enjoyed their best ever camp and are in the best ever shape. I won’t be any different when I face the media ahead of my WBO world middleweight title defence against Willie Monroe and it will most likely be an accurate statement.

At this stage in the game, what I can say for a fact is that it is the happiest I have been in myself during fight preparations.

I am very happy with the work I am getting through with Dominic Ingle and probably the difference for me is the nutrition side of things.

It seems like I have someone practically living with me monitoring my every move towards the fridge! His name is Greg Marriott and, while I am exaggerating saying he virtually lives with me, he is there three or four times a day.

That is a big, big help for me.

Then I have also got the Ingle way of doing things, their style, thrown into the mix, which I am picking up superbly.

It is not really about changing anything in particular, just adding a few bits.

I am really in a good place at the moment where I am enjoying it.

I would say my attitude towards boxing as a whole is on a different level since I have been in the Ingle camp.

There were times before when I got down about things because the big fights opponents said they were up for didn’t happen, but the way I look at it now is that if they are going to come, they will come.

I am now not prepared to stall myself anymore and rely on them. I am here now to literally take over – hopefully – and while people may scoff and say I am talking rubbish, I have been sparring good level fighters who have got a name in the game and I am handling them with ease, like I should be again.

You have got to be happy in what you are doing and at the minute I am very, very happy in what I am doing. Dom has got me in fantastic shape since I have been with him and I am in the right place.

With the Ingle style, I am not saying he has taken everything away from me and rebuilt me into a different fighter, not at all. He hasn’t broken me down and changed me into a new person, he has just added to me and the nutrition side has been a big, big factor in it.

At this stage before previous fights I was not normally in the condition to post topless selfies of myself on social media, but this time around I am in good shape and it is like I have realised that I am a world champion.

I am not just a man who wants to fight once a year, which I had been doing, because I was waiting for the big fights.

Waiting around for people and being let down has cost me everything, but mostly it has cost me time, time where I could’ve been fighting regularly.

I won’t be fobbed off anymore and they will come when they are going to come. People always ask if I am looking at Golovkin or Canelo, but my attitude now is sod them – I will just prove what I am by beating other people if they don’t come to the table.

I am now doing different stuff that I think is going to benefit me and, so far, it has been working.

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