The 32-year-old former WBO super middleweight champion last fought in May 2021, losing his strap to Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.

It was rumoured at the time of his defeat that he would consider walking away from the sport but there have been intermittent reports that he would be making a return to boxing, with no confirmation either way.

Now The Star has reported that he is back in the gym with former trainer Dominic Ingle.

“He came back a couple of weeks back just to find his feet, get away from home,” Ingle told the paper.

"He’s aiming to fight in December. His nutritionist Greg Marriott is based in Sheffield, we have just got to sit down and work out a plan of where he goes from there.

"That’s another conversation I need to have when I get back to Sheffield. It might work out, it might not.”

Saunders lost his first ever fight to Canelo as he suffered a broken eye socket that forced a retirement, the first loss in over 30 fights for the Briton.

"We had a spar last week, he’s definitely still got the grit,” said assistant coach Amer Khan.

"He’s still fighting like his life depends on it. Everything is still there.

"You have to kill him to beat him.

“You have to nail him to the ground. He can dig deep and take it to the well.”

Ingle added: “He's very skilful. As with most skilful fighters, like Prince Naseem, they tend not to realise their full potential because their skill gets them away from having to do all the hard work sometimes.

“In the Canelo fight he didn’t have a fantastic camp but he gave a very decent performance. I think he could have beaten Canelo. Maybe there’s more to the mark with Billy, let’s just see how it goes.”