Back in September I wrote a column titled “Boxing is bigger than it has ever been in the UK, sources say” in response to people on podcasts saying stuff without really knowing what they were talking about. I also said that at the time Britain had only one active male world champion: featherweight Nick Ball.
But I was wrong, it turned out. I wasn’t wrong to point out that British boxing is toiling at present, nor that world champions from the UK are few and far between. But I was wrong to propose that only Nick Ball from Liverpool was a world champion at the time. There was another one, too, you see: Lewis Crocker. He was a fresh addition to this exclusive club, having just beaten Paddy Donovan to win the IBF welterweight title, yet it wasn’t until I had written the piece and it had been posted that I was reminded of this. The urge then of course was to swiftly amend the column – one of the few perks of writing for an online audience rather than in print – and both avoid undermining the point I wished to make and retain the illusion that I knew what I was talking about.
Except I chose not to do that. Instead, I left it alone, maybe on account of laziness, or because in life what’s done is done. Or maybe the idea of bemoaning the lack of British world champions and the lack of attention given to them carries an even greater resonance if the person moaning about it fails to recall the identity of one of the two – yes, it’s two – world champions Britain currently boasts. It was a risk worth taking, I decided. So what if I came across as ignorant, or just one more columnist spouting an opinion without doing their due diligence? It made sense to me, in the context of the piece, and that’s all that mattered in the end.
Now, as we enter a new year, very little on that front has changed. We still have the same two world champions in the UK – Liverpool’s Nick Ball and Belfast’s Lewis Crocker – and the only new development to report is the possibility of a third man joining them this weekend, when Sheffield’s Dalton Smith travels to Brooklyn, New York to challenge WBC super-lightweight champion Subriel Matias.
That will be a tough ask for Smith, particularly given Matias tested positive for the performance-enhancing drug ostarine in November. In fact, call me a prude, or old-fashioned, but it is hard to believe the Smith fight is taking place in light of that test.
I guess that’s just the way it goes sometimes, especially if you mean something to someone. In the case of Matias, he had the support of WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman from the moment the test results were first revealed. “He [Matias] is not guilty; he has not been found at any level of consuming performance-enhancing drugs,” Sulaiman said last month in Thailand, before adding that his organisation’s Clean Boxing Program would require updating due to the number of supplements on the market that contain substances that are on the WADA banned list.
Perhaps he is innocent after all, Matias. Or perhaps he is not. Either way, for Smith, his challenger, the truth has no bearing on what he plans to do on Saturday night. All he sees is an opponent: two arms, two legs. All he sees is a world title and the chance to become Britain’s third world champion.
If he does become the third, Smith’s win against Matias in New York will surely eclipse the title wins of the other two, Ball and Crocker. Ball, to win his belt (the WBA featherweight title), beat fellow unbeaten prospect Ray Ford in Riyadh in 2024, while Crocker, to win his (the IBF welterweight belt), beat Donovan, another unbeaten prospect, last year in Belfast. Both of those wins were good wins, of that there is no doubt, but neither fight carried the same level of risk as Smith’s challenge of Matias.
Drug issues aside, Matias is a Puerto Rican fighting in New York, where many Puerto Ricans reside, and will therefore enjoy certain home comforts without being at home. He is also more experienced than both Ford and Donovan, with 25 pro fights to his name and a reign as IBF super-lightweight champion already behind him. He has lost twice, but never been stopped, and now, at the age of 33, is convinced he is entering his prime as a world champion.
It is for all those reasons that Smith starts as an underdog this weekend, with few outside the UK – where he has mostly been showcased – expecting him to leave Brooklyn with the belt. It is for those reasons, too, that more people in the UK should perhaps be talking about Smith’s impending challenge and be ready to offer him the plaudits he deserves should he pull off the upset.
As it is, the fight has barely made a ripple on this side of the Atlantic. It hardly helps, of course, that it is taking place in the US and in a different time zone, nor that it takes place on the second weekend of January, a famously barren and frugal month. But still, that is no excuse. In fact, even if the fight between Matias and Smith had been held at home – or, say, in Riyadh, our second home – it is hard to believe the reaction to it would be any different. After all, being a “world champion” in Great Britain no longer means what it used to mean, back when it was harder to achieve and we all recognised the names.
Now, thanks to the proliferation of titles, pay-per-view, and the shift towards apps and the Middle East, it is hard for anyone to keep track of who is doing what and what anything means. Not only that, there is a tendency on the part of those directly involved in the sport to believe that social media is a good barometer of its popularity, despite these people being led by an algorithm entirely of their own making. Outside that algorithm, or echo chamber, lies a whole other world, of course. It is a world in which a “world champion” in boxing has never been less important or sexy; a world in which boxing seemingly only matters if Netflix is involved, Jake Paul is trending, or big names are feeling small and need attention.
On an island like Britain, the name Smith is both small and common. There are scores of Smiths up and down the country and it is therefore a name as easy to forget as it is to remember. One only hopes that if Dalton Smith manages to become our third active world champion on Saturday night, his name we remember.
