Hearn pushing WBO to force Paul Smith – Arthur Abraham rematch

By Jeff Sorby - 09/28/2014 - Comments

Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn plans on appealing to the WBO to see if they can make his beaten fighter Paul Smith (35-4, 20 KOs) the WBO 168lb mandatory challenger to WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (41-4, 28 KOs), who beat him by a 12 round unanimous decision last night Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

Hearn’s beef was that the scoring was too wide in Abraham’s favor in a fight that appeared to be a lot closer than the scores given by the three judges. Hearn was especially upset about one judge scoring the fight 119-109. Hearn thought that score came out of left field. Interestingly enough, Hearn says that the fight could have gone Abraham’s way by a round or so, but he’s upset about the wide scores.

“119-109 is just not right in the sport of boxing,” Hearn said. “We will be appealing to the WBO, not for an immediate rematch because we don’t think that possible because we know how the system works. But because we feel Paul Smith should be installed as the immediate mandatory for Arthur Abraham. He hasn’t had a mandatory for a while.”

I’m not so sure that the World Boxing Organization is going to order a rematch or match Smith a mandatory challenger based on Hearn’s issues about the scores being too wide. There are a lot of boxing fans who felt that Smith didn’t do enough to deserve the victory. Yes, the fight could have been scored a little closer, but it really doesn’t matter because Smith still appeared to lose. It doesn’t matter if he lost by one point on all of the judges’ scorecards or by 10 points.

The main thing is Smith lost the fight. If Hearn wants to push for a rematch then he certainly can, but the rematch makes little sense for Abraham because he has bigger fish to fry in going after the winner of the Robert Stieglitz vs. Felix Sturm fight.