On Saturday night at the Leicester Arena in Leicester, Avtandil Khurtsidze (33-2-2, 22 KOs) blasted out undefeated Tommy Langford in five rounds to secure the WBO interim-middleweight title - and a shot at full WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders (24-0, 12 KOs).
Langford was the much taller fighter and tried his best to create distance, but all it took was one massive left hook from the 37-year-oldKhurtsidze to close the show.
Langford, 29, was undefeated in 18 contests and captured the British title in his last bout.
Saunders' promoter Frank Warren, is planning to stage Saunders vs. Khurtsidze on July 8th, possible in London.
Saunders was watching from ringside and he wasn't impressed by the action.
"Langford could have had a field day, you could see Khurtsidze was blowing hard but fair to play him," Saunders said on BT Sport. "I will show you who he is when I fight him. If I can't beat him I might as well forget about the big fights."
Saunders was being lined up for a June unification with IBO, WBA, WBC IBF middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. The fight fell through when Golovkin's handlers revealed that GGG was still pretty sore from his March win over Daniel Jacobs and wasn't physically ready to jump right back to training camp.
Saunders and Warren were very disappointed, as Khurtsidze was paid a step-aside fee to allow the Golovkin fight to take place.
The champion has been very inactive in the last two years. He's only fought once since capturing the WBO belt from Andy Lee in December 2015. He returned last December, not in the best of shape, and won a tough decision over Artur Akavov.
Khurtsidze has only lost once since 2005 - a 2010 decision loss to Hassan N'Dam. Since then he's won ten fights in a row, and his last six fights have ended inside the distance.
