Former junior middleweight champion Liam Smith has blasted upcoming opponent Chris Eubank Jr. for his 'laughable' excuses in the aftermath of their first encounter.

Back in January, Smith pulled off a sensational fourth round knockout of Eubank. It was a very unexpected outcome, as Eubank had never been stopped or seriously hurt in his two previous defeats.

The rematch is scheduled to go ahead on September 2 at the Manchester Arena.

For the second encounter, Eubank will be trained by Brian 'Bomac' McIntyre, which is best known for his current role as head trainer for undisputed welterweight champion Terence Crawford.

Eubank has firmly claimed that Smith nailed him with an illegal elbow during the sequence of punches which sent down. He also questioned the referee's decision to stop the fight.

"That (elbow) accusation made Chris look laughable rather than anybody else," Smith told The Daily Mail. "He’s come with the elbow, he blamed the referee. Because he activated the rematch clause he’s got to come up with some excuse and he really is that stupid he’s blaming all different excuses. 

"It was the referee at one minute, it was the elbow the other minute, it was the weight one minute, it was (trainer) Roy Jones’ fault the next. He’s blaming everybody bar himself.

"He can bring the best coaches in the world. I just think he’s that egotistic, you can’t really change him."

Should Smith win, he will be in line for several potential names - including Conor Benn, Kell Brook. Tim Tszyu and several others.

"Any of those fights excite me. Any of those fights are big-money fights for me," Smith said.

"There’s still a chance (of going down to 154). It depends what comes available. If (Jermell) Charlo vacates the four belts then I can maneuver myself in a position after Chris and fight for one of them titles then yeah, I’ll do light-middle again. 

"I beat Chris again and I should get a healthy ranking at middleweight also, so we’ll see."