IBF/WBC light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev (17-0, 17 KOs) and WBO champ Joe Smith Jr. (28-3, 22 KOs) have accepted terms for a June 18th contest potentially at Madison Square Garden in New York in a Top Rank-promoted show on ESPN.
Smith believes he’s going to beat Beterbiev based on his superior hand speed, athleticism and he feels he’s tougher than him.
It’ll be interesting to see if Smith does come out on top because there’s a lot of money at stake for the winner down the road.
The hard-hitting two-time Russian Olympian Beterbiev is coming off a ninth round knockout win over WBC mandatory challenger Marcus Browne on December 17th in Montreal, Canada. Beterbiev was like an angry bull after suffering a bad cut from a clash of heads in the fourth round.
Before the cut, Browne had been giving Beterbiev issues with his movement. But once Beterbiev was badly cut, he went after Browne in a rage and battered the New Yorker at will with shots against the ropes in the fifth.
In the ninth, Beterbiev dropped a battered & beaten Browne to get the stoppage.
“I believe I can come out on top in that fight because I’m more fluent, I got more speed and I think I’m a tougher guy than he is,” said Smith Jr to CompuBox TV about Beterbiev. “He’s been down more than once in his career already, and he’s never fought a guy that hits as hard as me.
“Who wouldn’t [want to see the fight?]. Its two huge punchers and two explosive guys that want to get in there and get the knockout. It’ll be a great fight,” said Smith Jr.
Smith, 32, recently captured the vacant WBO title with a narrow 12 round majority decision over Maxim Vlasov last April in a fight that was a lot tougher than expected for the New Yorker in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
In Smith’s first defense of his WBO title, he stopped replacement opponent Steve Geffrard in the ninth round on January 15th. Smith had previously been scheduled to defend against the heavy-handed slugger Callum Johnson, but he had to pull out of the fight after testing positive for Covid-19 on January 6th.
Beterbiev vs. Smith contest could set the table for an undisputed championship later this year against the winner of the May 7th fight between WBA 175lb champion Dmitry Bivol and Canelo Alvarez.
Canelo had planned on going after the undisputed light heavyweight championship in 2023 but could be persuaded to forgo his ideas of moving up to cruiserweight to take on WBC champion Ilunga Makabu for the much bigger match against the Beterbiev-Smith winner.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has been talking up the Beterbiev-Smith for the last year, and now he’s finally gotten the fight close to being made.