Smith battles through claret to best Dodson

Just to remind our readers that BoxRec News continues to be refused press accreditation for shows promoted by Frank Warren. Actually, that’s not quite true. I don’t apply for them any more as history proves it’s a complete waste of my time. As this report has been done from TV, you only get coverage of the three fights which were shown – other results from the card can be accessed via the above menu.

Paul Smith, up against it after suffering cuts to his eye and head in the early stages, battled through the mess and Tony Dodson’s negative tactics to retain his British super-middleweight title on points on Friday night.

The hyped Liverpool derby match at the city’s Echo Arena wasn’t much of a spectacle and is the second consecutive uneasy on the eye win for Smith – though in both cases I blame his opponent.

Dodson, for some reason both leading and coming up with his head despite having a height advantage, was warned over and over again by referee Phil Edwards whose Job-like patience finally broke in the tenth. He took a point from the challenger, extinguishing the faint hopes he had of stealing the contest.

I had the brawl 117-112 to the champion and the three judges saw it a similar way (Howard Foster 116-111, Marcus McDonnell 115-112, Victor Loughlin 117-112).

The first session was very tight – as was the first half of the bout – but the main outcome was a cut to Smith’s left eye caused by a clash of heads.

Smith had a bad cut opened on his head from another clash in the second round and the boxing abolitionists will have been rubbing their hands as the champion’s visage became a gory mess.

Smith gave himself a bit more space, understandably, in the third but Dodson got through with some of his best work of the fight; it was a brief outbreak of class as in the fourth Dodson resumed his bending low with rising head. Smith hit a right hand, left hook combination home and by the end of the round was getting visibly annoyed at Dodson’s holding.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the challenger was playing the waiting game and hoping the cuts on Smith deteriorated to such an extent that referee Edwards would call the doctor in. The former British champ can fight but in the fifth was choosing not to do so. He did resume action in the sixth and took it by way of a decent right uppercut which was the one clean and eye-catching move in the round.

I scored a scrappy seventh even – Smith was on the front foot throughout and Dodson was always the first to hold but the challenger came back with some decent work in the last half-minute.

The champion was a point up on my card and with his head oozing blood, it was still all to fight for. But a combination of Smith’s will and Dodson’s reserve meant the rest of the contest (other than the final round) was one-way traffic.

Smith took rounds eight to eleven as a pattern of his pressing, Dodson surviving and Edwards warning was played out ad nauseum; the long overdue docked point from Dodson in the tenth simply confirmed that, other than an improbable knockout by the challenger, Smith would be going home with the belt.

Dodson’s chief second, Dave Coldwell, had been uncharacteristically employing expletives for the last few rounds to try and convey a sense of urgency to his man but simply told him before the last “You’ve got to knock him out.” Dodson took the last round; Smith (unwisely in my view) chose to trade. It was the best round of a very messy fight.

Credit goes to Smigga’s cut man, Mick Williamson, who told his charge not to worry when he was cut after round one. I bet everyone else associated with Smith was. Class from ‘The Rub’ who gave credit to Preston ref Phil Edwards for letting him get on with his job and working on the ‘very bad’ cuts.

There wasn’t a huge amount of mutual respect shown after the bell and one couldn’t really blame Smith if he chose not to be magnanimous in victory, such was the nature of the build up and the bout itself.

Kell Brook picked up the WBO Intercontinental belt by way of a sixth-round stoppage of Poland’s Krzysztof Bienias. The visitor turned in one of the most safety-first, negative performances I think I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t have the excuse that Brook overwhelmed and outclassed him (he did) simply because these were his tactics right from the first bell. To exemplify, after three rounds Bienias had apparently landed only nine punches to Brook’s 94. I couldn’t remember as many as nine in the entire fight.

Brook just did as he liked throughout, especially in the opening two rounds as Bienias barely moved his hands from around his face, skipping round the edge of the ring. The Hillsborough welterweight turned southpaw in the third which had an immediate effect and Bienias even felt he ought to start offering something of his own, cracking home a right uppercut.

A left uppercut hit home from the Pole in the fifth but the two punches I’ve described were literally the only ones of significance a supposedly world class boxer managed to muster before Brook got through with enough meaty work in the sixth (a mixture of right crosses and uppercuts) to thankfully persuade Paisley arbiter Victor Loughlin to call a halt at 2:46.

Afterwards, promoter Frank Warren rather embarrassingly called out his former charge Amir Khan for Brook. Brook, being a heavy-handed slick welterweight of great potential but with no real profile as yet, is exactly the type of fighter that Khan would have been very unlikely to mix with under Warren’s direct tutelage - or any other sensible promoter who values Khan's commerciality, come to that. The Prescott aberration was just that - and that match wasn't suggested by Warren. There is little chance of a Brook match happening whilst Khan is with Golden Boy Promotions or Freddie Roach either; it just makes absolutely no sense for them. Khan can make more money for less risk fighting other people.

If Bienias didn’t come to fight, Ghana’s Atoli Moore certainly did. His only problem was that he didn’t know how to. He was challenging BoxRec’s own Tony ‘Bomber’ Bellew for the vacant light-heavyweight Commonwealth title. His ‘challenge’ such as it was, lasted all of 147 wild-swinging seconds. Even a novice fight fan could tell from the first bolo that Moore did not belong in a ring fighting for this once prestigious belt which is now sadly and regularly tarnished.

Bellew proved Moore’s lack of credentials immediately, a right hand starting the decline. Bomber, seemingly an excitable chap both in and out of the ring, poured on the pain for Moore, eventually sending him down, though he did get up for another futile try. You couldn’t knock Moore heart. The sad thing was, Bellew could knock just about everything else. Some more straight rights got through and that was that.

Dean Powell called me before the fight to explain that, despite BoxRec’s pre-fight log of 4-0 for Moore, he had a record for the boxer verified by his home country’s governing body, of 10-0. Whatever the situation, Moore was exposed as a very raw novice, one who made Dennis Andries look like Willie Pep, and should never, ever have been fighting for any title which hopes to retain any kind of credit or prestige.

Very sad for all concerned, though one hopes Moore made a few quid at least.