Liam Smith is happy eating crisps and binge-watching Netflix at the moment –– but he insists he’ll be ready when the call comes. The former WBO super-welterweight champion was last in action in December in Arizona before being ringside in Sheffield in February to watch the Kell Brook return from a 14-month hiatus.
Yorkshireman Brook was in against America’s Mark DeLuca at the FlyDSA Arena, exclusively live on Sky Sports in the UK and DAZN Stateside, and dropped him twice before stopping him after one minute and 15 seconds of the seventh round to claim the vacant WBO Inter-Continental title at the weight.
Shortly after the fight, the promoter of both Smith and Brook, Eddie Hearn, talked up a potential showdown between the pair, but with COVID-19 putting paid to any live sport for the foreseeable future –– and particularly boxing until at least the end of May –– that seems to have been put on ice.
“I get people saying: ‘Oh, he’s ducking you,’” Smith (29-2-1, 16 KOs) said recently. “He’s not ducking me and he’s definitely not scared of me. He has fought [Gennadiy] Golovkin and Errol Spence, so why would he be scared of me?”
Smith is sitting tight at the moment, awaiting the birth of his first child with fiancee Ashleigh, but he says he’s ready to jump into whatever is offered to him when boxing returns following the COVID-19 crisis.
“Obviously, Brook isn’t scared of me, not in that way, but I do feel he’s scared of losing to me. He’s a bigger name than me domestically and he’s probably a bigger name than me over in the States and I think he’s scared to lose to me because it probably ruins his achievements.
“Kell’s a good fighter, a very good fighter, and he’s not a shit house, but if he loses to me, where does he go? If he fights a Terence Crawford or a Spence again, he can say: ‘I’m going again, I’ve just been beaten by an elite fighter’, but me? It’s over for him.”
The aforementioned promoter of the pair Hearn still has designs on making a fight between ex-IBF welterweight champion Brook and former WBA Super world ruler Amir Khan and ‘Beefy’ has an idea as to why the fight may not happen any time soon.
“It’s the same with Khan. I think Khan probably [was] the biggest domestic fighter [in the UK] before [Anthony] Joshua, you know, to make a name in the States.
“I think Khan is probably scared of losing to Kell. So, that’s how I’ve always judged it. Khan’s scared of losing to Brook and Brook’s probably scared of losing to me. That’s always the way I’ve looked at it.”
Smith is currently number two in the WBO rankings and is, as a result, next in line for the champion Patrick Teixeira. Teixeira (31-1, 22 KOs) will meet Brian Castaño in a defence of his title and it had been set for April 25, but it will now take place at a later date.
“I’m easy,” Smith added. “I’m happy to keep busy and fight in a couple of 10-rounders, if the Brook fight can’t be made, and wait for my shot at the world title, but I’m also happy to go straight into a fight with Kell in September or October, once everything is back up and running and once Eddie has his new batch of dates from Sky.
“We’ll see what happens and we’ll know more when the Board lets us know when we can get back to it, but for now I’m just living normally and waiting for the phone to ring.”
Article by: Elliot Foster
Follow Elliot on Twitter: @FreelanceFoz