By Scott Gilfoid: #4 IBF Stephen Smith (22-1, 12 KOs) successfully made weight on Friday in coming in at 130 pounds for his IBF final eliminator bout against #6 IBF Devis Boschiero (37-3-1, 19 KOs) for their fight on Saturday night at the Olympia in Liverpool, England. Boschiero 34, weighed in at 129 pounds for their fight.
The winner of the Smith vs. Boschiero fight will be the IBF super featherweight mandatory challenger to champion Jose Pedraza. Whoever wins the Smith-Boschiero fight is likely going to be in for a world of hurt when they get inside the ring with Pedraza because this guy is world’s better than either of those two fighters in my view. It’s just not even close.
The only thing that the Smith vs. Boschiero fight is going to establish is picking out the next victim for Pedraza in my view.
The 30-year-old Smith will be fighting in front of his hometown fans in Liverpool this Saturday night against Boschiero. It might not matter. Boschiero is a pretty decent fighter, and he probably has enough in the tank to defeat Smith. However, we’re still not talking about a really good fighter in Boschiero though. I rate the following fighters as being much better than Boschiero and Smith:
Rances Barthelemy
Rocky Martinez
Orlando Salido
Francisco Vargas
Jhonny Gonzalez
Javier Fortuna
Bryan Vasquez
Diego Magdaleno
Argenis Mendez
Edgar Puerta
Juan Carlos Burgos
Arash Usmanee
Andrey Klimov
Romain Jacob
“Jose Pedraza is the man we’re targeting because he’s IBF champion,” Smith said to skysports.com. “They’re all good champions at super-featherweight. I’d take on any of them. It’s a well-matched division. I think Takashi Uchiyama is probably the number one because he looks a big puncher but Pedraza is as good as any of them.”
Smith is kind of at the last chance saloon for this fight against Boschiero. Smith was already beaten by Lee Selby by an 8th round knockout four years ago in 2011. That was a real reality check for Smith because he was just pounded in that fight and made to look like a 2nd rate amateur against a far superior Selby.
Smith’s trainer might as well have stopped the fight in the 1st round because he was nothing more than a skinny punching bag for Selby to beat up for eight round until the bout was mercifully halted in the 8th round. Selby dropped Smith with a big left hook to the head that had Smith badly hurt on the canvas.
The referee had no choice but to stop the fight. I had Selby winning every round of that fight. Jim Watt of Sky Sports had Selby up by just one round. I couldn’t understand that scoring. It was a total mismatch. Smith has since won his last 10 fights against weak opposition.
“I’d fancy my chance going in with any of them and it would mean so much to Liverpool,” Smith said about the super featherweight champions. “It would be massive because it’s such a boxing city. There aren’t many people here who haven’t tried boxing. We’ve craved a world champion for a long time – it’s been quite a while.”
I wouldn’t like Smith’s chances against any of the super featherweight champions. No way would I see him beating any of them.
The Smith-Boschiero fight will be shown live on Sky Sports 1.
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