By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBC Silver light heavyweight strap holder Tony Bellew is giving #5 WBO Paul Smith (35-3, 20 KOs) a good chance of pulling off what would be a huge upset this Saturday night in his title challenge against WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (40-4, 28 KOs) in their fight at the Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Bellew points to the experience of the 31-year-old Smith as the reason why he’ll do well against Abraham.
Bellew thinks that Smith has a ton of experience, even though he’s actually only fought two recognizable fighters in George Groves and James DeGale. As for the rest of the guys Smith has fought, they’ve been domestic level opposition.
“It’s a hard fight, but I do believe that Paul can maybe give Arthur Abraham a really good tussle a run for his money, because Abraham will be looking past how strong and tough Paul Smith is,” Bellew said. “Paul is a really rugged, tough and determined fighter, and the thing with Paul is he has an awful lot of experience under his belt. There will be testing times because Abraham really does punch hard, but I’ve got no problems envisioning winning the world title.”
Can Smith give Abraham a tough time of it? Yeah, I think he can at least in the first few rounds, but I don’t know if he can do more than 2-3 rounds of decent fighting before he falls apart.
Carl Froch and Robert Stieglitz both defeated Abraham by throwing a lot of shots and not giving Abraham a chance to come out from behind his clam-shell guard. Those guys never stopped punching, and it made it difficult for Abraham to get anything going. But with Smith, he’s not capable of throwing a lot of shots. If you watch his fights, he falls into a clinch after throwing one or two punches.
The stamina just isn’t there with Smith. He looks gassed if he throws more than 1 punch at a time, and all that clinching he does after every punch. I mean, there’s no way on earth that Smith is going to be able to beat Abraham if all he’s going to do is throw one punch while falling forward for a nice rest break in holding onto Abraham before the referee resets them for another punch and grab by Smith. I don’t think Smith does this on purpose. I see it as a basic stamina issue. He literally doesn’t seem capable of throwing more than 1-2 punches without grabbing for a rest break.
“The thing to me is getting the decision out there [in Germany]. That’s very, very big, but if anyone can do it, Paul can. He has a shot. It’s a big ask, but at the same time it’s one that he can pull off,” Bellew said.
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