Boxing Preview, June 18th: Artur Beterbiev vs Joe Smith Jr.
Photo by Mikey Williams/Top Rank Inc via Getty Images
Well, this should be a war while it lasts. Beterbiev, we know, is an aggressive, massive-punching agent of violence and Smith is… well, quite similar, just not as good.
Smith does have a shot here, in all fairness. It’s not a huge shot, but while he is for the most part an aggressive, brawling and somewhat crude fighter, he is capable of stepping off and letting an opponent commit to a first move to punish them, and since Beterbiev rarely concerns himself much with defence and has some fairly unsubtle footwork that can leave him off balance, Smith will have opportunities to not just land but catch his opponent when vulnerable. Despite the relentless aura around him, the Russian has shown himself to be vulnerable in the past, being dropped by Callum Johnson early in their fight and taking his time to get up to speed in his last contest vs Marcus Browne, there’s a chance for Smith to both hurt him and make him hesitate some by doing so.
His big problem, though, is that Beterbiev is quite happy to do the same - wait that beat on the back foot before stepping in to maul his opponent- and Smith, as much as he aims to come in with a few shoulder rolls and some proactive head movement, is much more likely to find himself off-balance once he’s actually thrown the punch - but if he shells up and tries to wait for opportunities that way, Beterbiev is an excellent, far more subtle than advertised worker of defences. It’s something that’s sometimes overlooked because he hits so hard that even his throwaways move guys, but he is very good at drawing a high guard out of position and punching through the gaps, at disguising the angle of his shots till very late, and generally doing things that make even much more complex defensive games than Smith’s- like that of Gvozdyk- tough to keep up under the pressure.
So what we’re going to get, in all likelihood, is Beterbiev taking some shots early on as he finds his timing, and a bit of a war once they both get going, but ultimately Smith is unlikely to have the toolkit defensively to last too long.
The rest of the card is mostly a prospect show, the most significant being Robeisy Ramires, continuing his recovery from some early pro struggles to step in with the unbeaten Abraham Nova. Nova’s not a bad boxer, moving smoothly behind a sharp jab, but he tends to leave his hands down after throwing combinations and is pretty static with his guard when it is up, so Ramires should be able to find the gaps in his defence to win. Beyond that, Wendy Toussaint steps in with the eccentric Brit Asinia Byfield (an odd choice of opponent for a card like this and he should be out of his depth, but he’s mad as a box of frogs in the ring so it should be entertaining). From the rest, Jahi Tucker is an entertaining, creative puncher welterweight puncher worth looking out for, among several prospects on the card.