Billy Joe Saunders Taken to Hospital with Orbital Fracture Injury After Canelo Fight
May 9, 2021
Things did not go Billy Joe Saunders' way during his fight with Saul "Canelo" Alvarez on Saturday night.
The referee stopped the bout after the eighth round because Saunders couldn't open his left eye because of the punishment it took.
On the DAZN broadcast of the fight (h/t ESPN's Marc Raimondi), Superb was taken to a local hospital in Arlington, Texas, to have his eye looked at.
Promoter Eddie Hearn told Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix (h/t Michael Woods of TalkBox) that Saunders "busted his eye socket."
The decisive blow was an uppercut to the eye delivered by Canelo late in the eighth round:
Saunders' trainer, Mark Tibbs, refused to let his fighter go back out for the ninth when he admitted between rounds that he couldn't see.
Saturday night marked the biggest fight of Saunders' career. The 31-year-old was fighting for the unified super middleweight titles against arguably the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world.
Even though Saunders came up short, he did provide Canelo with a strong challenge through the first seven rounds. It marked the first loss in 30 fights during his professional career.
Saunders lost the WBO super middleweight title in the process.
Canelo is unbeaten in his last 15 fights since losing by majority decision to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in September 2013. The 30-year-old is 2-0 this year with wins over Saunders and Avni Yildirim.