By Scott Gilfoid: A much bigger looking #4 IBF contender Stephen Smith (23-1, 13 KOs) stopped 34-year-old #6 IBF Devis Boschiero (37-4-1, 19 KOs) in the 6th round in an IBF super featherweight eliminator on Saturday night at the Olympia in Liverpool, UK.
Smith, 30, dropped down twice with left hand body shots in the 6th to get the stoppage. Referee Marcus McDonald halted the fight at 2:45 of the round.
The bigger Smith knocked Boschiero down five times in the fight. He dropped the Italian down twice in the 2nd round, once in the 4th and twice in the 6th. The second knockdown in the 2nd round was from a push rather than a punch from Smith. It shouldn’t have been ruled a knockdown. Referee Marcus McDonald totally blew the knockdown.
With the win, Smith is the IBF mandatory challenger to champion Jose Pedraza.
“He didn’t like it to the body,” Smith said after the fight about Boschiero. “He looked like a bodybuilder, but he looked small to me.”
“It will be next after the Pedraza-Cherry fight,” Smith’s promoter Eddie Hearn said about Smith challenging the winner of that fight. “He [Smith] can got to sleep as the mandatory challenger. He’s announced himself on the world scene. He has everything to believe that he’ll be world champion,” Hearn said.
Smith looked like he had a weight advantage of at least 15 pounds over Boschiero. I would have liked to have put the two fighters on a scale before they entered the ring tonight because Smith was just huge in size compared to the Italian fighter.
I didn’t rate Boschiero as a top 15 contender before this fight, and after seeing the way he fought tonight, I don’t see Boschiero as even a top 25 contender. He was just plain awful tonight. It wasn’t a case of Smith being good. It was case of Boschiero of being really, really bad.
You can’t blame Hearn for setting up this mismatch because it was the International Boxing Federation that setup this terrible mismatch. But it was just a really bone-headed move by the IBF to order Smith-Boschiero in an IBF eliminator rather than ordering Smith to fight arguably a much better fighter like Romain Jacob, Andrey Klimov, Michael Farenas, Eden Sonsona, Carlos Velasquez, Diego Magdaleno, Jason Sosa, Francisco Vargas or Orlando Salido.
Can you imagine Salido in there with Smith tonight? I think it would have been a mismatch with Salido destroying Smith worse than Lee Selby did four years ago in 2011.
This is Smith’s 11th straight win since his loss to Selby. However, Smith still hasn’t faced a good opponent since the Selby fight. That’ll change when he gets inside the ring with the winner of the Pedraza vs. Edner Cherry on October 3rd.
***
Light welterweight Bradley Saunders (12-1, 9 KOs) tasted the bitter sweet taste of defeat tonight for the first time in being disqualified in the 6th round for head-butting the superior French fighter Renald Garrido (15-11, 2 KOs).
Saunders was dropped in the 6th round by a flurry of shots from the 32-year-old Garrido. After Saunders got back to his feet, he connected with a beautiful head-butt that snapped Garrido’s head back, causing him to flee for the hills. The referee then did the right thing and halted the fight in disqualifying Saunders for his fouling move.
It was just so sad to see Saunders losing his cool after the knockdown and resorting to head-butting his opponent, but perhaps it was just an accidental head-butt, eh? Let’s give Saunders the benefit of the doubt.
As bad as Saunders looked tonight, I don’t know where he can go from here. Saunders just looked plain awful from start to finish.
Saunders looked like he wanted a way out in the 6th round when he clashed heads with Garrido. The fight was just incredibly one-sided, as Saunders couldn’t keep Garrido off of him, and he just looked desperate in trying anything to have the slaughter stopped.
Even if Saunders hadn’t head-butted Garrido, the fight wasn’t going to go too much longer. Garrido clearly had Saunders’ number and there wasn’t anything he could do to match the high volume attack that was coming his way. I suspect the fight would have ended by the 7th round if Saunders hadn’t head-butted Garrido.
***
In a big upset, lightweight Sean Dodd (10-1, 2 KOs) defeated a shot looking 29-year-old Gary Buckland (30-7, 10 KOs) by a 10 round decision. The referee scored it 97-95 in favor of Dodd. Buckland took a real beating from the 8th round on from Dodd. I mean, Buckland took some really big shots in those rounds and it’s a credit to him that he was able to stay on his feet with the beating he took.
With this win, Dodd will next be fighting British lightweight champion Scott Cardle (18-0, 5 KOs) next.
“100 percent,” promoter Eddie Hearn said when asked if Dodd will be fighting Cardle next. “It’s a Cinderella story. Now he’s going to fight Scott Cardle.”
Comments are closed.