By Scott Gilfoid: In a fight that hasn’t received a lot of publicity for obvious reasons, former WBO junior middleweight champion Liam ‘Beefy’ Smith (26-2-1, 14 KOs) weighed in at 153 1/4 pounds for his 12 round showcase fight against domestic level fighter Sam Eggington (24-5, 5 KOs) for this Saturday night on DAZN and Sky Sports at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England.
Eggington, 25, weighed in at 153 lbs. Both fighters looked good, and ready to battle it out on Saturday night. There was no real fireworks during the face off on Friday compared to the heavyweight match-up between former British/Commonwealth champion David Price and Kash Ali. Eggington looks like he knows out of his league in taking on former World Boxing Organization 154 lb champion Smith, so he wasn’t about to make it worse for himself. If Eggington hadn’t recently suffered losses to Hassan Mwakinyo and Mohamed Mimoune, he might be a little more energized for this fight.
Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn should have arguably put the Smith vs. Eggington fight in the third or fourth from the top of the card, because this is such a poor match-up on paper. It’s not even fair to the boxing fans that are going to coming to watch it live at the Echo Arena, and for the fans that will be watching from home on DAZN and Sky. Hearn could have done better than Smith-Eggington for a main event. 1
“It was a fight that was put to us. It was a fight that made sense,” Liam Smith said to Behind The Gloves about the Sam Eggington fight. “It does sort of gel for a good fight. We’ve had good spars. He has a style that will gel with mine. He will be in the fight. He’ll make it exciting. He’ll make it entertaining. I feel it’s a good fight for me. It’s kind of like a showcase fight. I sparred a good number of rounds with him, so I know what he brings. He’s not going to change. I feel I do everything better than him,” Smith said of Eggington.
Smith is coming off of a 12 round unanimous decision defeat at the hands of WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia on July 21 in Las Vegas, Nevada. For that reason, Hearn might have wanted to put him in with an opponent that he could look good against in order to give him a confidence boost. However, the 30-year-old Smith is beyond the point of needing confidence boosts, or at least he should be. At this age, Smith should be fighting the best possible opposition every time out. If Liam can’t cut the mustard against the best, then oh well, that’s how it goes. Smith was blabbing about how he’s better than Munguia, and how he thinks he can beat him. If that’s the case, then Smith should be fighting guys like Erislandy Lara, Julian ‘J-Rock’ Williams, Sergio Garcia, Carlos Adames, Kell Brook, Maciej Sulecki, Jermell Charlo, Austin Trout, Erickson Lubin or Israil Madrimov. This writer would have been happy if Hearn put Smith in with the talented former Uzbekistan amateur star Madrimov (2-0, 2 KOs). Smith against someone like Madrimov would have been a much better headliner than putting him in with Eggington, a guy that was recently knocked out in the second round by Hassan Mwakinyo last September.
“The Munguia loss is a itch that needs to be scratched by me,” Smith said. “I don’t feel he was a better fighter than me, I really don’t. A lot of things happened in his favor. His activeness. I feel like that’s a fight that I’d like down the line. He is with DAZN. I feel that can be made. I feel like I could counter him whenever I wanted to until the until the middle part of the fight. I started to fade and slow a little bit. The knockdown helped him, and changed everything in his favor, and he kind of cruised after that,” Smith said of his loss to Munguia.
Smith fought reasonably well in the first six rounds against the 22-year-old Munguia, but when the Mexican knockout artist increased the pace of the fight in the second half of the bout, Liam gassed out badly and lost the fight. At the end of the fight, it wasn’t competitive. Early on, it was back and forth, and there was a chance Smith might pull off the upset. You wouldn’t be able to call it an upset, because Munguia is young and still hasn’t beaten anyone that can be called an elite fighter. Smith is Munguia’s only true scalp on his resume. For Smith to get a rematch with Munguia, he’s going to need to start fighting better opposition right away, and hope that the World Boxing Organization will shoot him to the #1 spot in their rankings at 154. It’s a race against time for Smith though, because Munguia is planning on moving up to 160 soon, and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions aren’t going to see any value in making another fight against Liam Smith just because he feels he’s the better fighter. That’s why Saturday’s fight against Eggington makes no sense whatsoever for Smith.
It’s a fight that does nothing for him in terms of being pushed up the rankings, and it’s not going to make Munguia and Golden Boy feel like there’s anything to gain by fighting Smith again. It would be best for Smith to put the Munguia rematch completely out of his mind, and instead he should focus on trying to beat the talented junior middleweights like Madrimov, Brook, Adames, Lubin, Williams, Charlo, Sulecki, Garcia, Trout, Lara and Magomed Kurbanov. If Liam can start beating those types of fighters instead of the Eggington’s, he can get pushed to the top spot in the WBO’s rankings, and try and get his old title back. Right now, Smith is ranked #13 with the WBO, and that’s a spot that tells you that he’s got at least two, possibly three years before he’ll be in position to fight for a world title as the WBO mandatory. If Hearn keeps putting Smith in with guys like Eggington, it might take ages before he’s given a #1 ranking.