Pick it: Subriel Matias-Dalton Smith
When to Watch: Saturday, January 10 at 8pm Eastern Time (1am GMT)
How to watch: PPV.com
Why to Watch: This is a fight between a heavy-handed titleholder looking to continue his reign, and an up-and-coming contender seeking to start a reign of his own.
Subriel Matias, 23-2 (22 KOs), is a two-time junior welterweight titleholder. This will be his first defense of the WBC belt, which he took from Alberto Puello in July in a closely contested majority decision.
Matias, a 33-year-old from Puerto Rico, impressed in his prospect-and-contender stages as a slugger. Then came a surprising decision loss to Petros Ananyan in February 2020. Matias was able to recover from that by continuing as if that defeat never happened, by taking on and stopping undefeated prospects Malik Hawkins and Batyrzhan Jukembayev. He then took out Ananyan in their rematch.
That landed Matias a fight with the 30-0 Jeremias Ponce in February 2023 for the IBF belt that Josh Taylor had vacated. Matias beat Ponce via fifth-round TKO to win the title and made his first defense later in the year with a sixth-round stoppage of Shohjahon Ergashev. Matias’ team then scheduled a homecoming bout against Liam Paro, only for that to go sideways; Paro outpointed Matias in June 2024.
Matias is on a three-fight winning streak since then, culminating in the title win over Puello. It was initially thought that Matias-Smith could end up on the packed November 22 card in Riyadh headlined by David Benavidez-David Morrell. Instead, the fight is headlining at Barclays Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The Big Apple has a sizable Puerto Rican population. Matias is hoping for a much better outcome than the last time he defended in friendly confines.
There has been some controversy ahead of this fight. In November, Matias had a positive test for trace amounts of a banned performance-enhancing drug. Because the levels were below the commission’s threshold, the fight was allowed to proceed.
Dalton Smith, 18-0 (13 KOs), is the WBC’s mandatory contender at junior welterweight. The 28-year-old, who hails from Sheffield, England, will be fighting for the third time outside of his home country as a professional and for the first time in the United States.
In 2024, Smith put away former title challenger Jose Zepeda with a fifth-round body shot knockout. That was his only fight of the year; he pulled out of another due to an injury. In 2025, Smith made short work of the 19-2 Walid Ouizza and then got in some much-needed rounds, going the full 12-round distance en route to a unanimous decision over the 26-2-1 Mathieu Germain in April.
There’s a vast difference between defeating the likes of Zepeda, Ouizza and Germain, and beating someone with the power, pressure and experience of Matias. Of course, Smith is confident that he is ready to step up and shine.
“This is the biggest fight of my career, and Subriel will bring out the monster that’s inside of me,” Smith said at the fight’s kick-off press conference in November. “The biggest thing in boxing is being at your best, and you will see me at my best on January 10.”
More Fights to Watch
Saturday, January 10: Agit Kabayel-Damian Knyba (DAZN)
The broadcast begins at 1pm Eastern Time (6pm GMT).
Kabayel, 26-0 (18 KOs), is the WBC’s interim heavyweight titleholder and one of the top remaining contenders. The 33-year-old is from a city in Germany just down the road from this show at Rudolf Weber-Arena in Oberhausen.
Kabayel has beaten three straight notable fighters, knocking out Arslanbek Makhmudov in four rounds, Frank Sanchez in seven, and Zhilei Zhang in six to win that secondary belt. At 6ft 3ins, he is four inches shorter than Knyba, but that may actually prove an advantage to Kabayel, who is a body-punching aficionado.
Knyba, 17-0 (11 KOs), is a 29-year-old from Poland who is not rated by any of the four major sanctioning bodies and has not yet defeated any other ranked contenders.
The most notable foes Knyba’s faced and beaten are Andrzej Wawrzyk – stopped in three rounds in February – and Joey Dawejko, via a seventh-round stoppage in October. Knyba has at least gotten to spar with the likes of Daniel Dubois, Robert Helenius, Filip Hrgovic, Oleksandr Usyk and Zhang.
On the undercard is a bout for the interim WBC lightweight title between Jadier Herrera, 17-0 (15 KOs), and Ricardo Nunez, 26-7 (22 KOs).
David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.
