The World Boxing Organization has ordered Billy Joe Saunders to make a mandatory defense of his WBO middleweight title against undefeated challenger Demetrius Andrade.

Both sides have a short window of ten days (10) to negotiate and reach an agreement. If they are unable to reach an agreement, then a purse bid will be ordered pursuant to the WBO's Regulations of World Championship Contests.



The minimum acceptable bid is $200,000. Either said can skip the negotiations and request the purse bid procedure at any time during the negotiations.

Saunders (26-0, 12 KOs) has been inactive since securing one of the biggest wins of his career - when he traveled over to Canada to dominate David Lemieux over twelve rounds in December 2017 to retain his title.

It was only the third defense for Saunders since capturing the world title from Andy Lee back in December 2015.

Saunders has been plagued by injuries and postponed bouts.

He was scheduled to fight Martin Murray on two separate days in the last few months - and withdrew from both with claimed training injuries.

A deal to face WBC, WBA, IBO champion Gennady Golovkin was in place for August - but that fell through when Golovkin finalized a deal to face Canelo Alvarez in a rematch on September 15th at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

On the other side, Andrade has not been the most active fighter either.

He recently parted ways with career promoters, Banner Promotions and Star Boxing, so it will be interesting to see if anyone bids for him. There is industry chatter that both Top Rank and Eddie Hearn are making a play to sign him up.

Andrade (25-0, 16 KOs) has been out of the ring since last October, when he won a twelve round unanimous decision over Alantez Fox. That was his debut bout at the middleweight limit, after holding the WBA's "regular" title in the junior middleweight division.