After a disappointing night for Billy Joe Saunders, his management team, MTK Global put a positive gloss on things. “He went into the lion’s den and dared to be great in front of 70,000 fans,” said a post on Twitter. “You’re still one of the best fighters in the world. You will be back.” 

Saunders underwent surgery to repair multiple fractures to the bones surrounding his right eye on Sunday after he retired on the stool at the end of the eighth round of his WBA, WBC and WBO super middleweight title fight with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. It will be late this year or early next before he is fit to box again. 

There is no shame in losing to Alvarez. All boxers find their level sooner or later and this was the first time that Saunders had tasted defeat since he competed at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as a teenager. But having earned a reputed $7 million from his weekend’s work, it might be a question of whether Saunders will be keen to go back to the level he used to operate. 

Saunders won some rounds, but never really threatened to pull an upset. He was made to miss a lot and never really established his jab, using it more as a range-finder, which often fell short, rather than an attacking weapon. 

The upshot was that he never put Canelo under any real pressure. Alvarez knew he could land any time he really wanted to and if he might have believed before that Saunders could not hurt him, he was sure by the time round eight rolled round. 

The most obvious fight for Saunders seems to be against Demetrius Andrade, three years after they should have met. Andrade may be hoping for his own shot at Alvarez, but that prospect is probably quite far down the Mexican’s wishlist. A rematch with Chris Eubank Jr, seven years after Saunders claimed a split decision over him, might prove an attraction, although he is calling out Alvarez too and, having beaten seven British opponents, facing an eighth is unlikely to be a problem and would be welcomed by DAZN following their expansion into the UK. 

Alvarez wants a fight with Caleb Plant for the undisputed title in September and if he continues to be as active as he has been this past seven months, he could be after another opponent for December.  

The odd thing is that Saunders, despite being a two-weight world champion, could be remembered as a boxer who never fulfilled his full potential – such is the state of boxing in 2021. 

What will not have aided Saunders is his stop-start career in recent years. There is a lot to be said for momentum in all sports, boxing included. Regular fights and regular training camps can often build form. While he was in good shape for his fight with Alvarez, too often in the past, training camps were used to shed excess weight. It had been 3½ years since his career-best win over David Lemieux in Canada, 3½ years without a memorable win. 

His reign as WBO middleweight champion had started well enough, as he beat Andy Lee at the MEN Arena, Manchester, in 2015, but it took him a year to defend that belt, scrapping through a defense at a leisure centre near Glasgow Airport. Wins over Willie Monroe Jr and Lemieux put things on track, but the big fights never came and the title was handed back after testing positive to a stimulant. He won the WBO super-middleweight title at the Lamex Stadium, home of Stevenage, a team in the fourth tier of English football, made his first defense on the undercard of a fight between two YouTubers and his third in an empty Wembley Arena. 

That fight in Stevenage, an uneventful points win over Shefat Isufi, was the last time anyone in the UK bought a ticket to watch him. Eddie Hearn’s worldwide stable is now so big there are bound to be opportunities somewhere, although the relationship between the pair, which has never been too cozy, seemed to unravel in the build-up to the fight in Dallas. But if Saunders has ambition to get back to the top, he can expect to have to take some fights in the away corner.  

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.