By Charles Brun: The rematch between Liam Smith and Chris Eubank Jr has now been moved to July 1st at the AO Arena in Manchester due to Liam’s minor injury.
The former WBO junior middleweight champion ‘Beefy’ Smith (33-3-1, 20 KOs) says he wants to give the injury time to heal so that he’s “100%” when he faces the 33-year-old Eubank Jr on July 1st so that he can beat him again.
Titled ‘Repear or Revenge,’ the Smith vs. Eubank Jr II event will need to be promoted to the hilt to drum up the kind of business it did last January when the two fought.
Given the ease with which the 34-year-old Smith knocked out the pedestrian-looking Eubank Jr (32-3, 23 KOs), the boxing public will be reluctant to pay their hard-earned money to buy tickets to see this fight a second time.
“It’s just an old injury niggle flaring up, but I want to take the time to let it heal up so that I can enter the ring at 100% on fight night because a 100% Liam Smith beats Chris Eubank Jr every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” said Liam Smith to Boxxer.
Smith dropped Eubank Jr twice in the fourth round to score a stoppage last January in their domestic clash at middleweight. Rather than move on to bigger & better things, Smith chose to run it back against Chris.
Smith isn’t good enough to beat any of the champions or the talented contender at middleweight, so, understandably, he’s choosing to take the rematch with Eubank Jr.
Can Liam Smith destroy Eubank Jr again?
Before the fight with Eubank Jr fell into Smith’s lap earlier this year due to Conor Benn testing positive for a banned substance, Liam’s 15-year professional career was headed nowhere.
He’d been beaten by Jaime Munguia, Magomed Kurbanov, and Saul Canelo Alvarez, and his chances of getting a title shot against Jermell Charlo were slim. If not for the Eubank Jr fight being offered, Smith probably would have played out his string in a year or two and wound up retiring.
The best possible scenario for Liam Smith is for him to destroy the gawdawful Eubank Jr a second and then transmute the victory into a big-money fight against Gennadiy Golovkin, or a title shot against Jermall Charlo, Canelo Alvarez, or Jermell Charlo.
Light heavyweight prospect Ben Whittaker has been added to the undercard after stopping former Tommy Fury victim Jordan Grant (6-4) in the third round last Saturday night.
