Does Billy Joe Saunders Deserve To Be Called A Quitter? — Boxing News

Except for coward, quitter is the only most insulting, most damaging factor any fighter may be known as. By definition, no fighter, be she or he be a boxer or an MMA fighter, may be known as a coward – this as a result of truth they’d the bravery and the sheer guts to get into the ring, or the cage, within the first place. However quitter is a phrase, an outline of a fighter’s actions, that appears to be bandied round an excessive amount of lately.

Final yr, it was unbeaten heavyweight hope Daniel Dubois’ flip. Busted up horrifically across the eye in his large check of a combat with Joe Joyce, Dubois, unable to see and in nice ache, took a knee in spherical ten, the place he was counted out. Loads of individuals had been essential of Dubois, and the quitter world surfaced. Billy Joe Saunders himself was a kind of critics.

“If my two eye sockets had been damaged, my jaw damaged, my tooth had been out, my nostril was smashed, my mind was crushed, I used to be not stopping till I used to be knocked out or worse,” Saunders mentioned shortly after the Dubois defeat, this on the AK and Barak present. “I don’t agree with a person taking the knee and letting the ref depend him out.”

As we all know, Saunders didn’t take a knee in his large, probably life-changing combat with Canelo Alvarez final night time, as an alternative he allowed his group to drag him out after the eighth spherical as a result of ache, lack of imaginative and prescient and, dare I say it, concern his personal badly injured and swollen eye was inflicting him. The irony right here is in fact not misplaced.

So does Saunders deserve the heavy criticism many individuals, himself included, hurled at Dubois? On the very least, loads of individuals, Saunders included, owe Daniel Dubois a fairly large apology. Dubois, it should be remembered, fought on for fairly a while after his eye started to swell (this in spherical 2 of the Joyce combat). Final night time, Saunders was pulled out of the combat after the conclusion of the spherical through which his eye was broken; the harm being inflicted abruptly.

Once more, the phrase quitter is a powerful one, a phrase that shouldn’t be used flippantly. Saunders himself ought to take into consideration this earlier than he speaks about one other fighter.

Dubois, by the best way, confirmed us once more how stylish he’s and the way he holds no unwell emotions, by means of a tweet he despatched to the crushed Saunders:

“You fought properly, @bjsaunders – hope your eye heals up rapidly and you’ll come again stronger.”

Different fighters haven’t been so type to Saunders. Feminine fighter Ebanie Bridges, who suffered a grotesque eye harm in her combat with Shannon Courtney final month, however fought on till the bitter finish, tweeted the next:

“Don’t inform me he stopped cos of his eye….BJS was in that combat!”

What do YOU assume – did Saunders “stop” final night time?