By Dan Ambrose: In a battle between two huge sluggers, middleweight prospect Don Mouton (8-3-1, 7 KOs) defeated Tunisian Walid Smichet (19-5-3, 14 KOs) by a 10-round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Montreal Casino, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The final judges’ scores were 97-93, 97-93 and 98-92. Smichet, 29, a hard-hitting slugger well known for being the fighter who came close to defeating John Duddy in February, hurting him badly with big shots in the early rounds of the fight and cutting him badly over both eyes requiring more than 30 stitches afterwards to repair the wounds, found himself in a battle against a puncher with even bigger power and a higher work rate than his own on Saturday night against Mouton.
Smichet was never able to match the punch volume from Mouton, who came out firing huge bombs in the opening round and stayed at that pace for the remainder of the 10-round fight. Smichet, who now lives in Canada, was hurt several times in the later rounds of the fight, once in the 7th, 9th and 10th from the huge bombs that Mouton was throwing.
Mouton’s record, which currently has three losses among them, suggests that he’s got some technical problems with his game that’s caused him problems. However, Mouton’s problems have come largely against fighters that move a lot, and stay away from slugging it out with him.
Smichet, a pure slugger, was for the most part tailor made for Mouton’s style, presenting him with an easy target for him to land his huge bombs. Instead of having to chase his opponent around the ring, which has been the case in his three prior defeats, Mouton had Smichet right in front of him the entire fight and had no problem landing his huge bombs.
Smichet took an enormous amount of punishment in the fight, and appeared to win only two rounds – the 3rd and the 5th rounds. In the 7th, Mouton staggered Smichet briefly with a huge left hook.
However, Smichet showed a good chin and was able to recover from the shot almost immediately, although not enough to win the round or increase his work rate. In the 9th round, Smichet was again staggered by a left hook that he walked into.
In the 10th round, both fighters went toe-to-toe trading big shots, and Smichet was hurt again by a huge left hand blast from Mouton. To his credit, Smichet remained standing but his face looked battered at the end, reddened and swollen from the many shots he was hit with in the fight.
Smichet should have opted for different strategy as early as the first round when it was apparent that Mouton had too much power for him to stand in front of and try to trade shots with for the entire fight. Smichet has shown in the past to be able to wear some of his opponents down with heavy blasts over the stretch of the fight, but in this case, it wasn’t happening.
Mouton appeared to be the one with the better endurance and was showing no signs of slowing down as the rounds wore on.
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