By Terence Dooley
Frank Warren spoke to BoxingScene earlier today to share his frustration over the Billy Joe Saunders-Chris Eubank Junior situation and clarify a few points. The fight was announced last week—Saunders, 20-0 (11), was ready to defend his EBU middleweight belt against his domestic rival on the undercard of Tyson Fury's rematch with Dereck Chisora at London's ExCel Arena on November 29th—then hit a snag when Eubank Junior, 17-0 (12), failed to show up at last Thursday's press conference.
Saunders gave Eubank until 5pm that day to sign on the dotted line, but Warren today told me that they are still working on the fight and that their hand was forced due to the EBU's decision to reveal that a deal had been reached in principle when sending out a title update on September 15th.
"First of all, it wasn’t announced by us, it was announced by the EBU," declared Warren. "We agreed a deal with Eubank, Billy and ourselves. We got in touch with the EBU to ask if they’d recognise it, because Billy was supposed to have a mandatory against Michel Soro.
"They agreed to it, but rather than just telling us, they put out a flyer to all their members and affiliated parties on the 15th of September, which is a couple of press people in Italy, so it was out there. We stated where we were, that we had this agreement, at the press conference."
Some boxing fans bought tickets on the show on the strength of the middleweight fight, they are worried that the fight may not transpire. Warren moved to allay the fears of anyone in this situation.
He said: "They (the EBU) are the ones who announced it, we felt we had a deal and was just waiting for the contracts to be sorted out. Now, and this is the most important thing, if a fan bought a ticket on the strength of that fight they’ll get a full refund—that’s how we operate."
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