Promoter Ben Shalom would "love" to see Liam Smith and Chris Eubank Jr. run it back at one of England’s biggest soccer stadiums.
This past Saturday, Liverpool’s Smith earned perhaps the sweetest victory of his career, stopping Brighton’s Eubank in the fourth round of a middleweight bout at Manchester.
Eubank was the heavy favorite going into their fight.
Afterward, Eubank, 33, insisted that he has every intention of activating his rematch clause.
Should the two fighters square off again, there is already talk that the rematch should take place in Smith’s hometown of Liverpool.
Shalom, the head of Boxxer, says he would “love” to stage the fight at Anfield, the home of the prestigious soccer club Liverpool F.C. Anfield seats more than 50,000 spectators. Saturday's fight in Manchester saw a packed crowd of 18,000 arrive at AO Arena.
“Look, I imagine [Eubank] will [activate the rematch clause],” Shalom told iD Boxing. “I imagine he will. It will be up to him. I’d love to do it. I would love to do it. That was the plan. But we’ll see. It’s up to him.
“That’s where we want it to take place. If I’m honest, we’ve got to speak to Liverpool now. We were putting feelers out, but we’ve got to speak to them. Dream would be for Liam Smith to fight at Anfield, with Natasha Jones, perhaps, and maybe who knows who else? Maybe a brother of Liam’s as well. But we’ll have to see what Eubank decides to do.”
Eubank’s loss to Smith follows a failed attempt to get in the ring with welterweight Conor Benn in a 157-pound catchweight bout. But Benn was revealed to have tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug, leading to the cancellation of that event. Benn, who has subsequently been discovered to have tested positive for the same substance on a separate, earlier occasion, is currently being investigated by the World Boxing Council and UK Anti-Doping.
After the win over Eubank, Smith, a former titlist at junior middleweight, floated the idea of having the rematch set at 157 pounds.
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