Smith claims commonwealth title
Liverpool's Stephen Smith claimed the Commonwealth featherweight belt on Saturday night after edging his first title fight by a majority verdict against John Simpson in Glasgow.
Smith finished the stronger of the pair to continue his unbeaten professional record and upset the home crowd at the Kelvin Hall, on the undercard of Ricky Burns' WBO super-featherweight challenge against Roman Martinez.
Simpson was taking part in his 12th title fight and his experience looked to have told in the middle stages but the 27-year-old tired visibly towards the end of the 12 rounds.
After 116-114 verdicts either way, judge Ian John Lewis awarded the 24-year-old the contest by four rounds to hand him the belt and a guaranteed shot at Martin Lindsay's British title.
The opening two rounds appeared to go either way but Smith's right eye was cut in the third after an apparent clash of heads and Simpson landed two accurate right-handed jabs that made their mark in the following round.
The Englishman had disparaged Simpson's record in the build-up to the fight, claiming the Greenock boxer had made excuses for each of his six previous defeats, and the contest reflected such bad feeling.
Smith was using his jab to good effect but he was caught by sporadic right hooks, although he hurt Simpson in the final stages of the sixth round with a body shot. The fight remained tight in every sense and more bad feeling was apparent when Simpson retaliated after being caught by his opponent after the bell had signalled the end of the seventh round.
The fight opened up slightly in the ninth and Simpson recovered from an early blow to land several decent shots. But Smith, whose older brother Paul is British super-middleweight champion, looked more in control in the closing stages, adding several powerful strikes to his consistent jabs to take the belt.
Date published :
04 Sep 2010 - 23:00:42
