Liam Smith sealed an historic British title win by beating Erick Ochieng at Liverpool’s Olympia on Saturday night to become the third of the Smith brothers to hold a GB belt.
Liverpool-born Smith claimed the light-middleweight championship in a unanimous points victory, making it the first time in history that one family has held three British titles at the same time.
Smith’s brothers, Stephen and Paul, are the super-featherweight and super-middleweight champions respectively, whilst youngest sibling, Callum won the English title in the super-middleweight classification.
The 25-year-old Liam tweeted: “Proudest moment of my career and what a night to do it on, history and to do it in front on that atmosphere was unbelievable, thanks so much x”
Smith was recognised as the victor by all three ringside judges, with scores of 117-112, 117-112 and 116-113 after 12 frantic rounds.
The new British champion admitted after the fight that he and his trainer, Joe Gallagher, had watched former world champion, Miguel Cotto’s fight against Floyd Mayweather from last year in preparation for the fight.
The Puerto Rican actually lost the fight in May of last year, but after seeing Cotto trouble the American, Smith knew his tactics held the key to success against Ochieng.
“Erick does the Mayweather thing, but not as good,” the British boxer said after the fight.
“But at the end of the day, that is his style of defence and so I looked at the way Cotto had most of his success against Mayweather.”
Smith – nicknamed ‘Beefy’ – is now looking towards his first title defence and believes a voluntary bout against Jason Welborn could see him return to action in November.
He said: “Now I’ve got the British title, I want a notch on that and there’s no reason I can’t have a voluntary. Jason Welborn has been mentioning me. He’s just won a Masters title against Max Maxwell over 10 rounds and if he’s good enough to face Frankie Gavin in a voluntary defence then he’s good enough to face me. He’s only lost to Frankie.”
Such is the Liverpool fighter’s resilience that he turned up to play for his Sunday League side just hours after going 12 rounds to claim the British title.
Smith played the final 25 minutes of Seymour’s 3-2 win over Allerton in the Liverpool and District Sunday League.