Trainer Joe Gallagher wants to see a unification between his man WBA 168-pound titleholder Callum Smith and WBO titleholder Billy Joe Saunders in 2020, telling Sky Sports that he expects Smith to return in late September or early October for a UK homecoming fight, and that a Saunders bout, properly built, should headline a stadium show next year.
Smith (26-0, 19 KO) badly wants a big fight at Anfield, home of Liverpool FC, and Gallagher thinks Saunders (28-0, 13 KO) would be up for it:
“Next year definitely, outdoors yes, why wouldn’t he? That’s a huge fight by the time it’s built and it’s generated, and it gets the audience that’s deserving of a unification fight. Of course he would take that. Billy Joe, he doesn’t duck a challenge, but that’s a fight for next year definitely.”
Saunders, 29, just this past week split with promoter Frank Warren, and there was already talk of a Smith-Saunders fight earlier this year, with Gallagher saying the deal just wasn’t good enough.
Gallagher also sounds like he wants to see Smith, 29, fight two more times this year. He was last in the ring on June 1, wiping out Hassan N’Dam on the Joshua-Ruiz card, his first fight since his Sept. 2018 win over George Groves in Saudi Arabia. Smith hasn’t fought in the United Kingdom in just under two years now, dating back to Sept. 2017 when he beat Erik Skoglund in Liverpool.