Kind of seen it coming tbh. Classic case of feeding him guys that we,re either too small or no power. Was too easy for him being the bigger man with power himself. Starting to become apparent gallagher can only take you so far. Never been big on smith...hes good not great. But i ll tell you something hes a danger to groves. Groves is the better fighter...but still feel hes still to learn his lesson from the froch 2 fight. Still trying to trade hooks inside. He,ll come off worse eventually. Smiths got the power to make him pay for it. Groves does it every fight. Wins the outside fighting at a canter...then insists on trading inside instead of diffusing the situation. Skogland decent fighter.
I picked him to win this tournament but that performance wasn't as good as I thought it would be... he showed flaws.... and after watching it I think groves,eubank beat him. sticking with him as my pick though not changing now . unfortunately I thought he was the best out of his brothers.. but he doesn't look much better then liam :/
I'm a big Smith fan but as good as Skoglund was that was a worrying performance. That said things that can easily be improved, move your head this can be rectified fairly easy, don't throw backhand from out of range with no jab (this may have been due to inactivity), be first to the jab again easy fix. My fear is these big name coaches/boxers don't want to go back over the basics
Agreed. I just see a good prospect, not some world beater. Degale and Groves would wipe the floor with him, IMHO.
I agree Callum should have learned alot last night, so should his trainer. Skoglund would beat Murray with a bit to spare.
I agree, a fight between Murray (a natural 160) and a lad who's held his own amongst the 175's would not end well for the St Helens lad. He looked quite clinical against Torosyan but he was a bit of a tin can though.
Not a great performance. Skoglund had him confused just with decent jabbing and moving. Although he did well for his part you can see Skoglund himself isn't exactly a world class fighter. Smith still got the win mind you and I'd say this is probably his best one. Hard to pick him over someone like Groves after that
Said for ages i just never saw what other people see in Callum Smith. Gotta give him credit though as this fight was quite a step up for him and i think this is Smiths level. He is just so rigid and will be found out when he goes to world level
I think we can safely say after that last fight that both GG and Eubank jr are absolute levels above Smith.
In my prediction I said that Skoglund is a bit better than advertised and had attributes that could trouble Callum, EG the Jab and better movement. I wasn't surprised that it was a tough bout.
Interestingly I seen Joe Gallagher had a pop at Callum in post fight press conference for not using head movement, so maybe in Joe's defence they have been working on it.
He didn't do great tbh. Skoglund is clearly a decent fighter but not world class or anything like that. Having said that, after a couple of years of fighting guys he was certain to beat and not learning much from doing so, a fight this is very good experience for Smith. I can't see him beating Groves or Eubank, however.