Billy Joe Saunders (l) before his fight with Andy Lee in December.

While Golden Boy officials finalized a deal for Canelo Alvarez to face WBO junior middleweight titleholder Liam Smith on Sept. 17, another name came up: WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders.

Frank Warren, who promotes Smith, also handles Saunders, and Golden Boy has had talks with Warren about putting Saunders on the Sept. 17 undercard as a possible prelude to Saunders (23-0, 12 knockouts) and Canelo (47-1-1, 33 KOs) meeting up in the future, Golden Boy VP Eric Gomez told RingTV.com on Friday.

“We’ve had a couple discussions with Frank Warren because he also has Liam Smith,” Gomez said in a phone interview. “We’ve had a couple of discussions but nothing has been agreed upon. There’s no commitment yet. There’s just been a couple of conversations so we’ll see what happens.”

A fight with the chirpy Saunders at 160 pounds would obviously help Alvarez acclimate himself to the middleweight limit in preparation for a potential showdown with unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in 2017 while also giving him a title.

Gomez said his attention has been focused more of late on finalizing a deal to put undefeated Cuban heavyweight Luis Ortiz (25-0, 22 KOs) on the Sept. 17 undercard against Alexander Ustinov (33-1, 24 KOs) for a WBA secondary title. Gomez is close to wrapping up a deal, he said. The winner of Gomez-Ustinov is in line to face whomever emerges from Tyson Fury’s rematch with Wladimir Klitschko that was pushed back from July because of an injury to Fury. “There’s a couple of details that are being worked out,” Gomez said of Ortiz-Ustinov. “But it’s normal stuff. I’m very confident that we’ll be able to get it done.”

Golden Boy is also nearing completion of a deal for the Sept. 17 venue with T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the leading candidates with an announcement possibly to come next week, Gomez said.

Canelo wants to fight three times this year and Golden Boy is targeting a possible return for him on December 10 if he is successful against Smith and doesn’t sustain any injuries or cuts, Gomez said. One of the ideas being bandied about is to have him fight on regular HBO and not PPV. “It’s not confirmed yet,” Gomez said of the move back to HBO. “That would depend on HBO. But yeah, whenever we can get him on the network it’s great.”

Mitch Abramson is a former reporter for the New York Daily News and can be reached on Twitter at: @Mabramson13.