Hearn expects crowd to help Paul Smith beat Arthur Abraham tonight

By Boxing News - 02/21/2015 - Comments

smith4422(Photo Credit: Sebastian Heger) By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn says Paul Smith (35-4, 20 KOs) will be bringing over a large crowd of Brits tonight in Smith’s title shot against WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (41-4, 28 KOs) at the O2 World Arena in Berlin, Germany.

The arena sets up to 17,000 fans for boxing events, and it’s estimated that between one thousand and two thousand Brits will be in attendance to cheer Smith on the victory.

It’s unknown if the adrenalin that the 32-year-old Smith will get from the potential 2,000 British fans will be enough to make up for what he lacks in the talent department, but we’ll have to see.

If there’s going to be 15,000 Abraham fans and between 1,000 to 2,000 Smith fans, I kind of think that the crowd will largely be in Abraham’s favor. When you also factor in Abraham’s natural power and talent advantage, it pretty much gives one the impression that Smith is going to be out of his league in this fight.

“We know we’ve got the noise,” Hearn said via Skysports.com. “Paul Smith bought hundreds of Liverpool fans and Josh Warrington brought hundreds of Leeds fans as well. It is going to be an electric atmosphere in there. That is going to help. That helps a lot. It is going to be an electric atmosphere in there.”

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Here’s my take: I don’t see the crowd, whether it be for Smith or against him, as being a factor in this fight tonight. I mean, if Smith loses or wins the fight, it’s going to be based on what he has in terms of talent.

If he’s not good enough then he’s going to get whipped again like he was last time they fought. Smith lost a 12 round decision to Abraham last September in Germany in a fight that many of Smith’s fans thought he won. What’s weird about that fight is I saw the same fight several times, and I had the fight scored 11 rounds to 1 in Abraham’s favor.

I wanted to give Smith more rounds, but it was impossible for me to do that because Abraham kept scoring with huge punches to the head and body of Smith. The punch stats were almost even, so I couldn’t give Smith rounds for having outworked Abraham, because the two were throwing about the same amount of punches at each other. The main difference was that Abraham was landing the harder shorts in every round, and that was why I had him winning the fight by a landslide.

Smith’s fans can cheer him on and sing songs 24/7 tonight to help encourage him, but I see this going really badly for Smith. I think Abraham means business this time around, and he’s going to be looking to take the judges out of the equation by him knocking Smith out.

Abraham knows that if Smith is left standing at the end of the 12th round, he might start bellyaching about having been robbed again. Abraham would then be put in a position to decide whether he wants to give Smith another rematch in order to shut him up, or if he’s okay with just ignoring him and moving on.

I think it’s best if Abraham moves on, because he doesn’t want to have the remaining years of his career spent beating Smith over and over again by 12 round decisions.



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