Joe Smith Jr. has never legitimately lost by knockout.

The only technical-knockout defeat on his record was the result of Smith suffering a broken jaw in the second round of a fight against Eddie Caminero in August 2010. Smith continued for two rounds despite two fractures in his jaw, but eventually he succumbed to the extreme pain and lost by fourth-round TKO.

Jesse Hart wants nothing more than to become the first opponent to truly stop Smith. Philadelphia’s Hart (26-2, 21 KOs) is nearly a 5-1 favorite to beat Smith (24-3, 20 KOs) in a 10-round main event ESPN will broadcast Saturday night from Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

“He has two hands, I have two hands,” Hart told BoxingScene.com. “I see me really, really beating Joe Smith. If he gets crazy enough and gets courageous enough when he comes in there, he’s gonna get knocked out. He’s gonna get hurt really bad.”

That said, Hart isn’t underestimating Smith. Bernard Hopkins, Hart’s mentor, reminded him repeatedly during this training camp that Smith is more capable than the Mastic, New York, native appears at times.

Smith ended Hopkins’ Hall-of-Fame career when he knocked the former light heavyweight and middleweight champion out of the ring in the eighth round of their December 2016 fight at The Forum in Inglewood, California.

Hart noticed what Hopkins meant when analyzing footage from Smith’s last fight, a 12-round, unanimous-decision defeat to Dmitry Bivol (17-0, 11 KOs) on March 9 at Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York. Russia’s Bivol beat Smith by large margins on all three scorecards, but Smith buzzed Bivol with a right hand that landed to the side of his head just as the bell sounded to end the 10th round.

Bivol stumbled as he headed back to his corner, but the WBA light heavyweight champion had recovered by the start of the 11th round.

“Bivol started taking Smith for granted,” Hart said. “That’s what Bernard said I can’t do, because it’s gonna come so easy. He said I shouldn’t take him for granted if it comes that easy. Smith is sneaky. Smith will get that right hand off at any cost. He prays for you to get comfortable in there. As soon as you get comfortable, that right hand is gonna come out of nowhere. And you don’t wanna be in that predicament of how you’re gonna respond to that.”

Before this battle between 30-year-old, 175-pound contenders, ESPN will air another 10-rounder that’ll feature super middleweights Steven Nelson (15-0, 12 KOs), of Omaha, Nebraska, and Cem Kilic (14-0, 9 KOs), of Thousand Oaks, California. The telecast is scheduled to start at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.