Callum Smith destroys Hadillah Mohoumadi in 1st round

By Boxing News - 04/02/2016 - Comments

smith700By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC Callum Smith (19-0, 14 KOs) made easy work of the over-ranked #6 WBC Hadillah Mohoumadi (20-4-1, 15 KOs) in stopping him in the 1st round on Saturday night to capture his EBU super middleweight title at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK. The fight was a WBC 168lb eliminator bout, so the 25-year-old Smith is now the WBC mandatory challenger to champion Badou Jack.

Smith hurt the 35-year-old Mohoumadi with an uppercut to the head. Smith then backed Mohoumadi up against the ropes and flurried with arm punches until referee Francisco Alloza Rosa stepped in and halted the fight at 1:41 with Mohoumadi still on his feet but looking very, very hurt.

Smith hurt Mohoumadi with the first punch he threw in landing a left hook to the head while he was backed against the ropes by Mohoumadi. I don’t think Mohoumadi ever really recovered properly from that shot, because he backed up immediately and started covering up. Smith was then able to tee off with his shots. Mohoumadi did regroup momentarily in throwing some wild left hooks and right hands, but they weren’t aimed properly and missed by a country mile. This enabled Smith to throw some body shots and more uppercuts to back Mohoumadi up against the ropes. It was obviously a stupid thing for Mohoumadi to do in backing up against the ropes, but I guess that’s why he was the EBU champion rather than a world champion. Mohoumadi covered up like a seasoned sparring partner and let Smith nail him with shots until the referee had little choice but to step in and halt the slaughter.

All in all, it was a poor effort from Mohoumadi. He made the World Boxing Council look bad in ranking him so highly. The way that Mohoumadi fought tonight, I think he rated no more than a bottom 100 ranking and definitely not #6 with the WBC. That’s just an insane ranking if you ask me. How in the heck can an amateurish fighter like Mohoumadi be ranked at number six by the WBC when he’d not fought anyone good since 2012, and he’d lost those two fights.

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I knew this was going to happen. When I saw how the World Boxing Council let Mohoumadi fight in the WBC eliminator above the higher ranked #3 WBC Anthony Dirrell and #5 WBC Andre Dirrell, I knew this was going to be easy pickings for Smith. The Dirrell brothers arguably would have clowned the stork-like Smith tonight, but definitely not an average fighter like Mohoumadi, who hadn’t fought a quality opponent in four years leading up to this fight.
After the fight was over, Smith’s promoter Eddie Hearn crowed about the victory, saying that he thinks Badou Jack won’t want to fight Smith now. Hearn was really building Smith up.

To listen to Hearn blabber about Smith, you’d think he was the second coming of Andre Ward. Unfortunately, boxing experts know the real truth. Smith is a decent contender, but he’s out of his element and likely will get taken apart by Badou when they face each other this year.

As big as Smith is, I wonder how much longer he’s going to be able to keep making weight for the super middleweight division. Smith looked bigger than the top light heavyweights Sergey Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson tonight. I wish I could have put Smith on a scale tonight before he stepped into the ring, because I wouldn’t be surprised if he weighed in the mid-190s if not 200lbs. He was huge. He looked like a cruiserweight in there. Mohoumadi looked tiny in comparison, and he didn’t have the size to win the fight. It was clear as day. There was no way that a guy as light as Mohoumadi was going to be able to beat the hulking Smith.

This was Smith’s second straight 1st round knockout. In his previous fight, Smith stopped Rocky Fielding in the 1st round last November. That was too easy because Fielding fought like he’d lost his senses completely. He fought like an ape night, and kept trying to slug even when he was dropped. I don’t know how or why Fielding chose to keep slugging after he was hurt, but he sure as heck deserved to be blasted out in the first round. Fielding fought like a rank amateur in the ring.

If Hearn knows what’s good for Smith, he’ll have him fight another two or three times before he gets his title shot against Badou, because Smith needs to improve by facing quality opposition. I’m sorry, but I don’t rate Fielding and Mohoumadi as quality fighters. They’re just guys that had inflated rankings at the time Smith fought them.



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