Reporters’ star ratings for main events and undercards are based on in-ring entertainment, competitiveness and whether overall expectation was met
BOURNEMOUTH
MAY 27
MAIN EVENT
UNDERCARD
ATMOSPHERE
AT THE Hilton Hotel in Bournemouth, two miles south-west of the Vitality Stadium where Chris Billam-Smith would win the WBO cruiserweight title a little over nine hours later, the 32-year-old was intermittently shovelling fizzy sweets into his mouth while waiting for his chicken burger and fries to arrive.
“I like the cherry ones the best,” he said.
Those cherry ones, we would later discover, were among the first things he managed to keep down after he suffered with sickness and diarrhoea on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the fight. He could barely throw a punch during the open workouts on the nearby pier, so concerned was he with the possibility of making his illness public in the most degrading way.
Only three days after not being able to leave the bathroom, a right hand from an increasingly desperate and dangerous at the end of the 10th round cannoned into Billam-Smith’s left eyebrow, turning a graze into a gaping wound. It had been a hellacious, foulfilled scrap, one so downright ugly it had no business being so engrossing. A huge left then followed before another booming right, one that landed with an audible crack, sent Billam-Smith juddering into the ropes and towards a neutral corner where briefly, as his bright red mouth hung open, he looked on the brink of collapse. The sweet and sour taste of those cherry ones
