Chris Billam-Smith has ambitious plans following his world title win over Lawrence Okolie on Saturday night.
The pair clashed in Billam-Smith’s home town of Bournemouth and he knocked Okolie down three times to become the WBO cruiserweight world champion.
In the aftermath of the fight, the only man to have previously beaten Billam-Smith as a professional, Richard Riakporhe, called out his former rival.
But, Billam-Smith’s trainer, Shane McGuigan, has told Riakporhe to challenge the division’s other champions as his man is coming for Canelo, who had previously teased a potential move up to the 200 lb division.
“Why aren’t you going after [Arsen] Goulimirian? Why weren’t you going after Lawrence Okolie?” McGuigan said of Riakporhe when speaking to Boxing News.
“It took Chris Billam-Smith to go and beat Lawrence Okolie for him to go cool, I beat you in the first fight.
2
“Fight Lawrence or fight Goulimirian or fight [Jai] Opetaia. Fight one of them! You’re not going to get the Badou Jack fight.
“Badou Jack’s waiting for Canelo and if he’s waiting for Canelo [then] CBS should get the Canelo fight! I’m not even joking. We won’t go to Guadalajara, we’ll maybe go to Vegas.”
And Billam-Smith himself echoed this sentiment, as he said: “Next dream is I guess Vegas. I’d love to fight in Vegas.
“Unfortunately, no American cruiserweights [with] world titles over there at the moment.
“There was talk of a Mexican [Canelo] coming up to cruiserweight once who does good tickets in Vegas! I think Vegas would be another bucket list thing.”
With that being said, Billam-Smith’s more likely next fight will be with Okolie once again, as ‘The Sauce’ had a rematch clause in place.
“[Okolie’s] a proud man, he’s a winner at heart and I think that [rematch] makes sense to him and why wouldn’t you,” Billam-Smith said.
“You’ve got a world title opportunity again, it’s not like I’ve sparked him out clean. It was a messy fight at times, a clear winner. Yes, I hurt him. I’d expect him to want the rematch.”
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘752905198150451’);
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
News Summary:
- Chris Billam-Smith wants to fight Canelo after world title win against Lawrence Okolie
- Check all news and articles from the latest Boxing updates.