Dalton Smith Faces Wrong Style In Alberto Puello

Dalton Smith’s stoppage of Subriel Matias turned him into a heavy favorite for his October 24 meeting with Alberto Puello. That victory might also be giving his supporters false comfort ahead of his first WBC light welterweight defense in Sheffield.

Puello shares almost nothing in common with Matias. Matias marched forward in straight lines, providing Smith steady chances to plant his feet, counter, and clinch. By round five, Smith cracked the Puerto Rican with the decisive sequence.

The praise surrounding Smith’s stoppage of Matias glosses over just how messy and limited his work was between the big moments. If his primary tools are leaning, tying up on the inside, and relying on one explosive counter sequence, he is walking right into an ambush against someone like Puello.

Puello will not walk into range to be timed. The Dominican operates as a slick southpaw who circles the perimeter, refuses to stand flat in the pocket, and relies on clever footwork to control distance.

“It’s going to be a high-level boxing fight,” Smith said to DAZN Boxing. “I’ll approach this fight completely different if I need to.”

Puello possesses a sharp right check hook, using it to clip aggressive opponents before sliding away at an angle. Smith cannot follow him in straight lines; he needs sharp feints to make the challenger commit first.

That slippery approach can easily bank rounds on the scorecards. Puello proved his awkwardness in a razor-thin majority decision loss to Matias in July 2025, a bout many ringside observers felt he won by boxing off the back foot. If Smith spends the first five rounds searching for the ideal counter, he could easily fall behind on points, forcing him to take wild chances down the stretch.

The Sheffield fans will want another explosive knockout from Smith. If Puello slows the tempo into a tense chess match, the restless crowd could tempt the champion into lunging. Smith carries the heavier punch, yet Puello possesses the angles and defensive ring craft to make this first title defense a long, grueling night.

If Smith cannot force a brawl, his offense risks looking empty. Puello has spent his entire career frustrating fighters who rely on basic forward momentum, and ringside judges often reward his clean, elusive boxing when the home favorite is swinging at air. If Smith relies on the exact same crude bag of tricks he used in July, his reign could end up being very short.

When Matias was landing his heavy shots early, Smith genuinely looked shaken and completely out of ideas before he switched to survival mode and started grabbing for dear life.

That reveals a major vulnerability in his ring temperament. Clinching worked as an emergency valve against Matias because Subriel stood right there, accepted the nonstop holding, and tried to muscle out of it. Puello will not cooperate like that. When Smith lunges forward to wrap him up, Puello will take a half-step back, pivot off the lead foot, and make him clutch empty air.

Missing with punches is bad enough, but stumbling forward into nothing while trying to tie up a guy who has already slipped away is completely exhausting. It drains a fighter mentally just as fast as it does physically. If Puello makes him miss, makes him look clumsy, and leaves him with zero answers inside the first four rounds, that same discouraged look will creep right back across Smith’s face. Once a fighter realizes their single fallback move is totally useless, panic sets in quickly.

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