By Scott Gilfoid: Paul Smith’s complaining about the results of his loss to WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham last Saturday night in Germany could possibly pay off for the 31-year-old fighter because the World Boxing Organization (WBO) are going to be reviewing the fight to make a determination on whether a rematch should be ordered or if Smith should be made the mandatory challenger.
What Smith and his promoter Eddie Hearn’s gripe is that the scores were too wide in Abraham’s favor. The judges scored it 117-110, 117-111 and 119-109. I don’t think there’s much argument over the fact that Abraham won the fight.
The issue is that the scores were too wide in his favor. I personally scored the fight 119-109 in Abraham’s favor, because I thought he dominated pretty much every round of the fight. I gave Smith a couple of token rounds, but he really didn’t dominate long enough in any one round to give him more than 2 mercy rounds at best.
The WBO said this on twitter today: “The #WBO is waiting to receive the assigned supervisor’s report and replaying the fight before giving an opinion on #AbrahamSmith.”
It would be surprising if the WBO goes ahead and orders a rematch between them, because it seems pretty clear that Abraham won the fight. If they order a rematch, then it’s just going to put Smith in the same situation the next time he loses to Abraham.
I’m betting the judges will score the fight by a wide decision then as well, and we’ll have Smith bellyaching for a 2nd time, trying to get a rematch again. At some point the WBO just has to say ‘enough’ and let Abraham move forward with his career.
Abraham’s promoter Kalle Sauerland said last Saturday that there’s no way he would have Abraham fight Smith in Liverpool unless Hearn comes up with a big offer to lure Abraham to come over there. He also said that he’d be open to letting Abraham fight Smith again if the people badly want the fight. As far as I can tell, the only people who want to see a second fight between Smith and Abraham is Smith’s fans.
“The best outcome for me is for the WBO to watch the fight, sort the judges out, get three neutral and competent judges in, make me mandatory challenger and put the fight up for purse bids,” Smith said to Skysports.com. “Let’s do it again and have an immediate rematch.”
I really don’t think this was a controversial enough fight for the WBO to order an immediate rematch unless you consider a lopsided decision to be a reason enough to order a rematch. Smith just wasn’t powerful and busy enough to win the fight. That’s not the judges’ fault that scored the fight. it was on Smith for lacking the power and not throwing the punches he needed to in order ti win the fight.
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