Smith-Fielding & Burns-King make weight

By Boxing News - 11/06/2015 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC Callum Smith (17-0, 12 KOs) and #5 IBF Rocky Fielding (21-0, 12 KOs) both made weight on Friday for their fight this Saturday night for the vacant British super middleweight title at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK.

Smith weighed in at 11st 13lbs 5oz and looked like he was ready to start fighting on the spot. He didn’t look drained as I thought he would. The fighter who did look painfully thin was Fielding, who weighed in at 11st 13lbs 3oz.

I suspect he’s going to gain a ton of weight tonight and walk into the ring on Saturday night a cruiserweight sized fighter. There’s nothing wrong with that though because there isn’t a rehydration clause in the contract, so it doesn’t matter how much weight Fielding gains back before the fight. It’s all perfectly above board.

“I’m a puncher as well. I’ve never showed signs of being hurt in the past against far bigger punchers than Rocky Fielding,” Smith said via skysports.com. “I think it’ll come down to who’s the better fighter and I believe that’s me. I believe I’m better in every department. I believe I’ll win and win comfortably. I do believe I’ll get the knockout.”

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Smith is likely going to have problems in this fight on Saturday night because he’s a limited fighter who needs to fight in close for him to have success. He can’t fight on the outside to save his life, and he has to fight with his feet totally planted on the canvas in order for him to generate any kind of punching power. He’s not like Fielding, who can throw shots from a wide variety of angles without losing his punching power.

Smith must be standing flat-footed and throwing to the body for him to get power on his shots. For some reason, he can’t throw head shots with nearly the same kind of punching power that Fielding has.

The struggling 32-year-old former two division world champion Ricky Burns (38-5-1, 12 KOs) weighed in at 9st 7lbs 9oz for his mismatch against little known Josh King (20-3, 9 KOs) in their fight for the vacant WBO Inter-Continental lightweight title. What’s interesting about this fight is that it’s set for 10 rounds instead of 12. That’s kind of odd because usually fights for titles are 12 round fights.

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King, 30, weighed in at 9st 8lbs 3oz. Burns has lost 3 out of his last 5 fights and his career is really sinking down the drain. I don’t know why Burns’ promoter Eddie Hearn has chosen to match him against such a soft opponent, but I guess all those recent defeats that Burns has suffered has him being extra careful with him.

Burns would like a world title shot in the near future, but for that to happen, he’s going to have to stop losing all the time. I mean, it’ll look really bad for Burns to be getting a world title shot at this point with him having recently been beaten by Omar Figueroa, Dejan Zlaticanin and Terence Crawford.



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