By Jim Dower: #2 WBC Joe Smith Jr. (23-1, 19 KOs) has seen his boxing stock rise to the top overnight since his upset 8th round knockout win over the old warhorse Bernard Hopkins (55-8-2, 32 KOs) last Saturday night at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
With the big victory over the 51-year-old Hopkins, Smith’s promoter Joe DeGuardia sees a title shot for him against WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis “Superman” Stevenson as a possibility. The only problem is the WBC organization has already slotted the winner of the February 24th fight between Eleider Alvarez and Lucian Bute to be the one that fights the 38-year-old Stevenson next.
For DeGuardia to get the WBC to change their mind about the winner of the Alvarez-Bute fight being next for Stevenson, it’s going to take some persuading. Smith Jr. is not the mandatory challenger for Stevenson with the WBC, and he’s not a world champion. Stevenson can’t just say that he’s sidestepping the winner of the Alvarez-Bute fight in order to fight a unification fight against another champion. Smith Jr. isn’t a champion. He’s just a guy that has two very good wins in 2016 against Hopkins and Andrzej Fonfara.
DeGuardia said this to RingTV.com about him potentially making a fight between Smith Jr. and Stevenson:
“Absolutely Adonis Stevenson is still an option,” DeGuardia said. “The WBC, who I have a lot of respect in (president) Mauricio Sulaiman — and I expect that he would recognize that if the parties were to agree otherwise, that this fight transcends many different things. And to be able to have a world championship fight in New York for Adonis Stevenson would be something spectacular.”
You can’t blame DeGuardia for wanting to have his fighter Smith Jr. take advantage of his big wins over Hopkins and Fonfara. Smith Jr. did a better job against Fonfara than Stevenson. Fonfara knocked Stevenson down in their fight a couple of years ago and went the full 12 round distance.
Stevenson hasn’t defended against his WBC mandatory for three years since his win over Tony Bellew in 2013. If Stevenson is able to bypass his mandatory to fight Smith, it might make the WBC look like they’re not enforcing the mandatories in their division. It would likely make the WBC belt more desirable for potential challengers though, because if they could win one of the WBC’s titles, then they too could fight just voluntary defenses for two to three years against bottom feeders in the division rather than the top challenger.
It’ll be four years since Stevenson has fought his mandatory in 2017. That’s incredible. I don’t see how the WBC can continue to let Stevenson fight voluntary defenses. No matter how good a fight between Stevenson and Smith Jr. would be, Stevenson needs to fight his mandatory challenger.
It’s not as if the WBC is making it difficult for Stevenson by having him fight the winner of the Bute vs. Alvarez fight. Those guys are both flawed fighters. Bute has struggled with his career since his knockout loss to Carl Froch four years ago. The 32-year-old Alvarez has looked like a mediocre fighter throughout his seven-year pro career.
Smith Jr. might be better off fighting someone like Seanie Monaghan. I think that’s a fight that can potentially get made. DeGuardia needs to be careful in the type of fighter he puts Smith Jr. in with, because if he matches him against someone that is too good, then he’ll lost the fight. Smith Jr. is not the type of guys that can be counted on to beat everyone in the division.
I think Artur Beterbiev and Oleksandr Gvozdyk would have too much talent and firepower for Smith Jr. Sullivan Barrera, Jean Pascal, Juergen Braehmer, Nathan Cleverly, Sergey Kovalev, and Yunieski Gonzalez would all be difficult fights for Smith Jr. Maybe he could beat some of them, but then again maybe not. Those are all good fighters.
The WBC would make life easy for Smith Jr. if they would allow him to fight Stevenson for his title, but that would be a move that would invite the WBC to all kinds of criticism from the boxing world. It might be bad news if the WBC let Smith Jr. fight Stevenson next rather than his mandatory challenger.
Smith Jr. beat Hopkins in a fight that had a strange ending with Hopkins flying out of the ring in the 8th, and then choosing not to re-enter it to resume fighting. Hopkins said he’d been pushed out of the ring by Smith Jr. The replay showed that Hopkins was punched out of the ring by four punches that he ate from Smith.
Fighters get knocked out of the ring all the time. That’s not the unusual part of what we saw last Saturday night with Hopkins. What was unusual was Hopkins electing not to get back in the ring after saying he got hurt falling out of the ring. Hopkins specifically said his ankle hurt him. The replay showed that Hopkins appeared to hit air.
It was Hopkins’ back and head that hit the ground when he fell out of the ring. Hopkins did look like he hit the ground very hard with his back and head. It wouldn’t be surprising if he were injured to those areas of his body.