Liam Smith Believes Weight Cut Played A Role In Loss To Chris Eubank Jr.

Liam Smith has opened up on his 10th-round TKO loss to Chris Eubank Jr. on Saturday.

Smith and Eubank Jr. were having their rematch in Manchester, England as Smith shocked many by winning the first fight. However, in the rematch, Smith says he had a bad weight cut which he had to cut over 40lbs, which he feels like played a big role in his loss.

“I couldn’t get off,” Smith said in the post-fight press conference (h/t BoxingScene). “The weight cut just took its toll on me, from the minute of the back injury to the minute of the rescheduled date. It was like a race against time, from our point of view, the deadline where Chris might have walked away from the rematch, so it was always a race against time, anyway, and I just feel it obviously played its part. You didn’t have to be a genius to see how flat [I was] 40 seconds into the fight, you know what I mean? I just couldn’t get going, I feel. I feel the weight killed me.”

“I think everyone knows and Chris knows how I was with the weight, to say at the weigh-in,” Smith continued. “After the injury, I came down three stone (42 pounds) and so [that is] a lot of weight to shift in a short space of time.”

Along with the weight cut, in the fight, Liam Smith rolled his ankle which he said messed up his footwork.

“Yeah, I rolled it in about round two or three,” Smith said of his ankle. “What can I say? Even the ankle part, I’ve done that before in fights. It was just more, like, being flat that killed me.”

Were you surprised Liam Smith suffered a loss to Chris Eubank Jr. in the rematch?