Paul Smith: Froch showed how to beat Abraham

By Boxing News - 09/24/2014 - Comments

smith556(Photo Credit: Sebastian Heger) By Scott Gilfoid: #5 WBO Paul Smith (35-3, 20 KOs) will be fighting for a world title for the first time in his 11-year pro career this Saturday night against the big punching WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (40-4, 28 KOs) in what shapes up to be the last chance for the 31-year-old Smith at the Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

With the fight being in Germany, Smith can pretty much forget about winning a decision. That’s obviously not going to happen. If Smith wants to win this fight, he’s going to have to prove that he can do what other fighters with superior power to him couldn’t do in Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, Jermain Taylor, Carl Froch, and Edison Miranda.

Those guys all tried to KO Abraham and none of them came close. Miranda came close as far as breaking Abrabam’s jaw in their first fight in what many boxing fans saw as a straight up robbery of Miranda with him being penalized left and right for belt line shots instead of low blows.

The thing is Smith isn’t much of a knockout puncher, so he’s kind of up the creek without a paddle right from the start. Without any chances of knocking Abraham out, Smith is going to have to focus on trying to out-box Abraham and then pray that he doesn’t get royally robbed.

“Carl Froch has shown how to beat him but Carl fights the way he does and I fight the way I do,” Smith said to Skysports.com “Andre Ward did it differently to Carl Froch. I think the jab is going to be key in the fight and I can match anyone with my jab. I’ve got to keep off-setting him with that.”

Smith has never been the type of fighter who stands on the outside just throwing jabs. His jab isn’t that good, and he seems to get tired after throwing more than 2 or 3 jabs. If Smith can stay on the outside and jab for 12 rounds, he might be able to have a chance, but his stamina is so horrible that I can’t see that happening. He likes to hold too much to get rest breaks, and that’s where Abraham is likely to hurt him with one of his rabbit punches to the back of the head while Smith is holding on trying to rest from throwing jabs.

“I’ve got to be smart. I’m not going to go in there like people assume. I’m not going to go in there, stand in the middle and just bang away. That just plays into his hands,” Smith said.
I really can’t see Smith doing anything other than going out there and banging with Abraham because that’s all he’s ever done in his past fights.

Smith always slugs with his opponents. In his losses to James DeGale, George Groves and Steven Bendall, Smith came out slugging and ended up getting either out-boxed or knocked out. I think there’s something inside of Smith that pushes him to trade with his opposition even when it’s painfully obvious that he doesn’t have the skills to be slugging it out.



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