Barney-Smith ready for Bellotti but still hopes to land Carroll clash

While Southampton’s gifted southpaw junior featherweight hope Royston Barney-Smith is satisfied to be fighting Reece Bellotti on August 1, he had been looking for an opponent elsewhere.

Barney-Smith and Bellotti box on the 3Arena Dublin bill topped by Pierce O’Leary’s bout with Mark Chamberlain and Barney-Smith, trained by Ben Davison, is rated No. 9 by the WBO and 12 with the IBF.

Asked if he saw similarities between his path and that of new WBC interim champion Ryan Garner, from the same city as Barney-Smith, with Garner having stopped Bellotti a couple of fights ago, Barney-Smith said: “Yeah, definitely, but my fight isn’t really for the European after this [Garner had previously boxed Salvador Jimenez for the European belt]. I want to fight Jono Carroll, who I was meant to fight, but he didn’t want to fight for some reason. It was supposed to be this fight. It was supposed to be this show. I got a call from Frank Warren saying, ‘Would you like to fight Jono Carroll? I was like, ‘Yeah, if you can make it happen. Not a problem.’

“And we got in touch with our team and we were talking and then for some odd reason that he told me that him and his team isn’t talking, they’re in a bit of shambles at the minute and then one thing led to another and then the fight never come off.”

Barney-Smith is 16-0 (8 KOs) and he concedes that, while the Carroll fight is not on for now, Bellotti is his best opponent to date.

The “Bomber” is 20-7 (15 KOs) and the 35-year-old veteran was competitive with Josh Padley in his last fight in October.

“He will be, yeah. He will be,” said Barney-Smith, 22, asked whether Bellotti is his best opponent thus far.

“He’s a good front foot fighter and he’s not a bad thinker. He’s very good on the inside. He knows how to make room for himself and get off shots that he’s good at.”

The two have not sparred, though they have worked alongside one another before, at the gym of trainer Jim McDonnell.

“I’ve trained with him before when I was very young with Jimmy Mac,” Barney-Smith explained. “I only ever done one session there. I worked with my mate Jake Ball down there who used to be a stablemate. I’d done a bag-circuit and he was there. I was only 12 years old then as well.”