By Eric Thomas: In a close fight, Colombian light middleweight contender Joel Julio (33-1, 30 KOs) pounded out a close 10-round unanimous decision over star from The Contender reality television series Ishe Smith (19-3, 9 KOs) on Wednesday night at the River Rock Casino, in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. Julio, 23, was coming off of five consecutive wins after experiencing a shocking 12-round unanimous decision to Carlos Quintana in June 2006, started off strong against Smith, but then seemed to fade in the last five rounds of the fight as the defensive wizard Smith began bringing the fight to Julio.

Though the judges scored it 96-94, 97-93 and 96-93 all for Julio, the fight looked much closer to a draw then having an outright winner between the two. Indeed, Smith, 29, appeared to be the better overall fighter, as he applied a lot of pressure against Julio in the second half of the fight, while making him miss many of his own shots. In Julio’s case, he looked uncomfortable with all the pressure that Smith was putting on him, and seemed to be out of his realm having someone back him up for a change.

It wasn’t difficult to see why Julio lost to Quintana three years ago, because Julio looked awkward against Smith, and not in the same class in terms of boxing skills. However, Smith unfortunately failed to let his hands go in many of the round, in particular early in the fight when he threw only sparingly with his own shots. But, when he did let his hands go, Smith looked good, throwing jabs and hitting Julio with sweeping double hooks to the head.

Julio landed well in the first round, hitting Smith with hard punches to the head and midsection. I could see why that Julio has such a high percentage of knockouts on his record, for he has very heavy hands and tends to put a lot of power in every shot he throws. Smith, however, wasn’t making it easy for him by moving constantly and leaning away from his big shots. In addition, Smith would make Julio pay when he strayed to close and overextended himself, hitting him with short counter shots and making Julio look bad in the process. Julio appeared to do just enough to win the first round, though it could have gone either way because Smith looked excellent.

In the second round, Julio started well in the first half of the round, hitting Smith with a steady stram of big body shots. However, Julio found himself on the defense in the last part of the round as Smith attacked him with big hooks, catching with hard shots and making Julio shut down his offense almost completely.

In the third round, Julio once again started out strong as he attacked with very heavy shots in the first part of the round, backing Smith up and catching him often. By this time, the right side of Smith’s face started to redden from the big shots he was catching.

The fourth round was Julio’s best round of the fight, as he continuously unloaded with big shots to the head and body without much incoming from Smith. This round seemed to show why Smith had lost to both Sechew Powell and Segio Mora, two fighters that he likely could have beaten if he had let his hands go a bit more. Julio just plain outworked him and made him almost disappear in the round.

Julio began to shown signs of slowing down in rounds five and six, his output dropping steadily. He appeared to do enougnh to win the 5th by a narrow margin but the fight was changing as Smith began turning the tables on Julio and backing him up for the first time in the fight.

Smith completely took over the fight from rounds seven through ten, hitting Julio with beautiful jabs and winning most of the exchanges that took place. The rounds were somewhat close, but it was clear that Smith was the stronger fighter and the more skilled of the two. Now it was Smith who was landing the harder shots and keeping Julio under fire. Julio finally started getting his act together in the last round, but it was Smith who finished strong, hitting Julio with a series of triple jabs in the last minute and half.

Based on this fight, I don’t see Julio going too far in the light middleweight division. He doesn’t have enough boxing skills and will lose to the first talented fighter he comes across. Someone like Vernon Forrest would give him a boxing lesson and make him look bad.