Former world champion Carl Froch believes Liam Smith – due to a huge weight cut – was not capable of performing at his best in last Saturday’s rematch with Chris Eubank Jr. in Manchester.
Eubank avenged a January knockout loss, by battering and stopping Smith in the tenth round of their second encounter.
In the aftermath, Smith claimed that his body felt very flat after cutting down over 40-pounds in camp to make the middleweight limit of 160.
The rematch was scheduled to take place in July, but it suffered a delay when Smith sustained an injury in training camp. Smith explained that a back injury was the cause of his weight gain.
In the opinion of Froch, Smith was conning the paying public in a sense, because he had to have known that he couldn’t performance at his physical best in the contest.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Chris Eubank’s performance and I don’t want to write off Liam Smith too much, but Liam Smith was that bad,’ Froch said to Talk Sport.
“It transpired in the post-fight press conference that he took three stone off. Taking three stone off, 42 pounds in weight, being that drained going into the ring. Not only is it dangerous but it is also kind of conning the fans, cheating the fans and the public when you are there to put a performance on and actually you have got no chance of putting a performance on because you are physically incapable.
“That’s what it looked like from round one for me, he was on survival mode after the knockdown but before that he did nothing. It just wasn’t good enough from Liam Smith, I was disappointed in his performance, I expected a lot more than him.”