Frank Warren on Lee-Saunders, BoxNation, More

By Frank Warren

We anticipate a full house for another lip-smacking world middleweight title fight at the Manchester Arena on December 19 when Lee and Saunders finally meet for Lee’s WBO belt, especially as there will be two other world championships contested on the same pre-Christmas cracker of a bill.

Manchester’s new hero Terry Flanagan will make the second defense of his WBO lightweight title and Merseysider Liam Smith flexes his muscles as the freshly-anointed WBO super-welterweight champ against a challenger to be announced shortly.

I know both Lee and Saunders have great mutual respect for each other for what is the first fight between two Travellers for a legitimate world title.

There may be no bad-mouthing or ill-feeling between them but much Romany honor is at stake so this will be a real war.

And Turbo Terry and Beefy Smith have a lot to live up to after their respective breathtaking demolitions of top Americans Diego Magdaleno and John Thompson.

Our Northern lights truly sparkled over Manchester last time out and we can be sure of another starry night.

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BoxNation viewers experienced a double treat last weekend, witnessing breathtaking performances from arguably the two finest exponents operating in world boxing today: Gennday Golovkin, of course, but also  the man who some believe is actually the better regarded as the currently best  pound-for-pounder, the brilliant Nicaraguan flyweight world champion Roman 'Chocolatito' Gonzalez.

He extended his perfect record to 44 wins (37 by ko), stopping former two-time champion Brian Viloria in the ninth round. Should Mayweather keeps his vow never to fight again, fly-swatting Gonzalez could become the first to actually break that 49 fights undefeated streak of Rocky Marciano.

And there’s so much more to thrill the fans on BoxNation this year, with major international and world title scraps to be exclusively screened live virtually every weekend leading up to Christmas,  including, of course Cotto v Alvarez. Can’t wait for that that one.

The big fight action continues this weekend when 2014 Fighter of the Year and undefeated two-division world champion Terence Crawford defends his WBO junior welterweight world title against Haitian-born Canadian slugger Dierry Jean in home-town Omaha.

Like Golovkin and Lemieux, both are terrific punchers, with formidable ko ratios, so stand by your sets for more fistic fireworks!

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Here we go again.

After correcting Sky Sports Boxing’s Adam Smith a couple of weeks ago for his comments about the “biggest ever Autumn of boxing” on the channel, it’s now the turn of Barry Hearn.

Buzzin’ Bazza boldly proclaimed in his column last week:“In my 30 years as a promoter I have never known four world title fights involving British boxers all in one month.”

Those 30 years have certainly affected his memory as I can think of many occasions when there have been more than four Brits fighting for world titles in a month.

Two that spring to mind are:

6 in October 1997
Naseem Hamed v Jose Badillo
Joe Calzaghe v Chris Eubank
Lennox Lewis v Andrew Golota
Carl Thompson v Ralf Rocchiagiani
Nicky Piper v Dariusz Michaelczewski
Nigel Wenton v Giovanni Parisi

6 in December 1997
Naseem Hamed v Kevin Kelley
Robin Reid v Sugar Boy Malinga
Ryan Rhodes v Otis Grant
Adrian Dodson v Winky Wright
Barry Jones-Wilson Palacios
Mickey Cantwell-Eric Jamili

And in just ONE night at the Sheffield Arena in December 2000 I promoted four world title fights involving Brits: Joe Calzaghe v Richie Woodhall, Daniel Santos v Neil Sinclair, Paul Ingle v Mbuelo Botile and Mauricio Martinez v Esham Pickering.

Perhaps he’s confusing the lowly four shows he promoted throughout the whole of 2006.

At the Manchester Arena on Saturday 19th December, we have three world title fights on the line with Andy Lee v Billy Joe Saunders for the WBO World Middleweight, plus WBO World Lightweight Champion Terry Flanagan and new WBO World Super-Welterweight king Liam Smith defending theirbelts on one big night.  Plus I’ll shortly be announcing some big exciting news of another world title fight in December involving a Brit.

Watch Crawford v Jean from 1am on Sunday morning exclusively live on BoxNation.  Go to www.boxnation.com to subscribe