Paul Smith stops Tolan, wants Kenny Anderson next

By Boxing News - 11/09/2012 - Comments

Image: Paul Smith stops Tolan, wants Kenny Anderson nextBy Scott Gilfoid: Former British super middleweight champion Paul Smith (32-3, 18 KO’s) returned to the ring on Friday night after sitting out of boxing for the past year and defeated 39-year-old journeyman Tommy Tolan (4-13-1, 3 KO’s) by a 4th round stoppage at the Olympia, in Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.

The fight was halted after the 4th round had ended when Tolan’s trainer called the referee over to let them know that Tolan couldn’t continue. Tolan’s nose was bleeding and he had a cut over his right eye. Tolan was hurt in the 4th round from a left hook by the 30-year-old Smith, and took heavy punishment throughout the round.

Tolan lost a point for holding in the round, as he was in the survival mode. Tolan, who came into the fight having lost 9 out of his last 10 fights, was pretty much in the survival mode from the 1st round as he did little more than clinch and threw very few punches.

Smith knocked Tolan down in the 1st round after hitting him with a hard left hook to the chin that caused Tolan to touch gloves on the canvas in order to prevent from falling down. It was counted as a knockdown. Smith landed hard shots in the remainder of the round while Tolan consistently held. This pattern was repeated in 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounds, as Tolan simply didn’t belong in the same ring with Smith. It was painfully obvious that Smith’s team had picked a little too soft an opponent for Smith to be coming back after a year long layoff.

After the fight, Smith called out British super middleweight champion Kenny Anderson (18-1, 13 KO’s), saying “I want to fight Kenny Anderson next. I’ll fight him anytime, anywhere for that title [the British 168 lb strap].”

I wouldn’t recommend that Smith fight Anderson anytime soon, if ever. Anderson is too powerful for Smith in my estimation and we’d only possibly see Smith get stopped again like he was against James DeGale and George Groves. There are levels in boxing and Smith just doesn’t appear to be on Anderson’s level from the way I see it. It would be a pity to see Smith get taken again before he’s even had time to pile up a few wins under his belt after his last stoppage loss.

I honestly think Smith doesn’t belong as super middleweight. He doesn’t have a super middleweight body. Sure, he weighed in as a super middleweight but if you looked at Smith’s physique last night you no doubt spotted a thick coat of body fat around his midsection and quite a bit of flab in that area. His body looked like it was about 25 to 30 pounds overweight.

If you took off all that flab, I think Smith would be more of a welterweight than a super middleweight. He’s got to go back into training and lose that weight, and my advice would be for him to move down to 154. Forget about 160, because if he takes off his spare tire he’ll little more than a junior middleweight and would be out-sized by the middleweights. Smith still has too much baby fat on him and he needs to go on a nice low calorie diet and get rid of that excess weight.



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