His commentary RUINS fightnight for me I can't stand his fake ****ing enthusiasm it's terrible. American commentary far better.
i like smith, nice guy loves boxing, never bitched about the rival networks and had a great voice for commentary. what i didn't like was his content missing punches from opponent and kept to narrative
Nice fella, possibly the worse commentator in sports. No disrespect to anyone but there’s people who complain, rightly, about the ‘ narrative ‘ that the DAZN commentators follow but forgot that the vast majority of Smith’s time at Sky was with Matchroom. He gave them an exclusive deal. He started it. He created the narrative. You would have thought that Ted Cheeseman was the new Roberto Duran the way he went on. Matchroom were promoting in sports centres in Essex before he became involved. If you hate Hearn, hate Matchroom and hate DAZN, thats fine but let’s not rewrite history because the poor fellas been ill. Don’t get me started on Boxxer….
I think that's fair and unfair at the same time. We tend to look on Smith almost like another promoter here and although he was clearly influential, he didn't have the sign-off to do things like guarantee the exclusive long-term deal Matchroom did. But once it was done, it was his job to sell it, just like football commentators try to flog us films, or niche sport, or Rob and Romesh doing their latest hackneyed nonsense. The fact he sells Boxxer cards like they're the Rumble in the Jungle kind of proves that. When it comes to Smith vs Costello I'd rather have neither (on TV at least).
It's just non-stop selling with Smith. There was a period of time somewhere around when Froch was becoming a big name that Sky's agenda became all about the hyper-aggressive selling. DAZN now the same. It feels surreal to go back and watch some of the old Sky broadcasts from before this period where some of the biggest names like Lennox Lewis were being criticised heavily after wins. Yesterday Hearn described Joshua vs Parker "a great fight". Smith is just horrendous but people buy into him as a man who "loves his boxing" and all that.
AJ v parker could have been a great fight. The ref spoiled that one. At the time it was another AJ stepping stone
Bull. The ref sucked but it wasn’t due to him that it was ****. The ref was in Joshua’s pocket, yet Joshua couldn’t land a punch. It was ****. Neither wanted to engage.
