Smith’s largest fight to date was in front 21,000 at the Manchester Arena, when he defeated John Thompson to win the WBO belt.
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The boxing world thought Canelo Alvarez vs. Liam Smith was nothing more than a showcase for Alvarez to distract fans from talking about showdown between him and undisputed middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.
Canelo is dropping down to light-middleweight after he made a decision to give-up the WBC middleweight belt that he won off Khan, rather than fight Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Though understandably thankful for the career-high payday he’ll earn, Smith would’ve been well with his right to demand that Alvarez take part in VADA or USADA testing.
Round 2: Canelo throwing punishing shots. Look for Canelo vs Smith to start between 10:30 PM and 11:00 PM ET.
R6: Things starting to get a bit chippy here, with Smith roughing Canelo up in the corner and getting a firm warning from the referee for his trouble. “The styles are very different but the styles mix well to provide a handsome fight, a great fight for the fans so I hope so”, Canelo told BoxNation. “We envision Canelo doing a third fight in 2016 either at or close to the middleweight limit and then a fight (in May) on Cinco De Mayo at 160 before facing Golovkin in the fall”, De La Hoya said.
Diaz (22-0) is the No. 3 rated featherweight in the World Boxing Council, and the triumph could vault the 2012 U.S. Olympian over top-ranked Leo Santa Cruz and No. 2 Josh Warrington of England to challenge WBC champion Gary Russell Jr. He is a hard puncher, connects, comes forward and has good combinations. Smith does not appear to be bothered by much, if anything, and he is fully prepared for that atmosphere. I hurt my right hand, so I had to use my left more often. Perhaps Smith will indeed stun a lot of people this weekend. I give this round to Smith for his late work.
“This is a chance to make a big name for myself in America because the biggest name in Boxing with the biggest draw is Canelo”. “I am the best fighter at this moment,” Alvarez said Saturday night.
“I had a plan for Canelo this year to have him fight in the biggest arena in the West Coast (Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena), the biggest stadium in the U.S. (AT&T Stadium, among the NFL’s largest) and then possibly in NY in December”, De La Hoya said Wednesday.
Smith, blood streaming from a cut near his right eye, kept coming, but even his best shots weren’t enough to slow Alvarez, and he went down again in the eighth after a crunching left hook to his midriff.
“Kell’s a world class athlete and a world class fighter”, Smith says.
The undefeated Smith, however, feels that he is being unfairly written off and has promised to cause a major surprise by beating the heavy favourite Canelo and is even preparing to rematch him as a result. What these odds really speak to is Smith’s relative obscurity to most of the boxing public outside his native United Kingdom.
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Will that matter? Smith believes so.
