Billy Joe Saunders has vowed to fight on after successful surgery on his fractured eye socket.
The 31-year-old’s career looked in serious danger after a fierce uppercut from Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez on Saturday night stopped their super-middleweight unification fight in the eighth round in Dallas.
Promoter Eddie Hearn warned he will be out for a ‘long, long time’ afterwards.
Billy Joe Saunders has vowed to come back after his devastating defeat against Canelo Alvarez
The Mexican delivered a brutal uppercut to inflict an horrific injury to Saunders on Saturday
But after his operation on Sunday, Saunders wrote on Facebook on Monday night: ‘Broken eye socket and broken cheekbone in three places — operation yesterday, all went well.
‘You win some and lose some. Didn’t feel out (of) my league but got caught with a good shot and couldn’t see.
‘Thank you all who watched. I’ll be back, God bless you all.’
Saunders will struggle to recover not just from his busted eye socket but far more traumatically from the abandonment of his ‘no surrender’ code.
Saunders was retired on his stool by his corner and needed surgery on his injured bones
Eddie Hearn had said the Brit could decide to retire, having already won two world titles
Hearn had said he ‘may decide to retire because he’s won his two world titles and done all he wanted in boxing,’ but Saunders has now insisted he will be back.
There may however not be another fight as massive as this one, in which Alvarez rejuvenated the boxing world with his dramatic termination of an initially clever and spirited effort by Saunders.
There was one final humbling for Saunders as Canelo’s trainer Eddie Reynoso admitted this was not one of his man’s best performances.
And the multi-champion himself said: ‘This one was easier than I expected.’
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
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