Canelo Alvarez vs. Billy Joe Saunders must have UK judge, says Eddie Hearn

Eddie Hearn wants at least one British judge to be on the panel when super middleweight champions Canelo Alvarez and Billy Joe Saunders meet on May 8.

The fight was announced the day after Alvarez defeated mandatory challenger Avni Yildirim in Miami, Florida.

The Mexican is on a mission to unite all belts in the division and holds the WBA and WBC titles, with Saunders the current WBO champion.

Alvarez will be the big favorite, and Hearn fears Saunders may not have a representative from his home country judges.

Speaking to BoxingScene.com, Hearn said, “I think we need a neutral panel.

“I think we need a British judge there. I think we need an American judge on this. But I do not know. Look, the UK judgment hasn’t been great lately. And then we just saw another bad scoreboard in New Zealand [for the Joseph Parker-Junior Fa fight Friday night], so it happens everywhere.

“And also, when [Alvarez is] the biggest star like that, we sometimes take advantage of the doubt with the noise of the crowd in close-knit situations. So we’ll see. It’ll probably be Las Vegas or Dallas, and we’ll decide in the next week, maybe two weeks at the most.

“We are going to push for a British judge,” Hearn continued. “That’s the way it should be because he’s champion versus champion. It’s not just, you know, it’s all Canelo Alvarez. He’s a world champion fighting a world champion. So, this is something that we are going to stress.

Hearn recently hit to judge the scores for the Zelfa Barrett vs Kiko Martinez fight in February.