BILLAM-SMITH EAGER TO END DECADE-LONG CLARKE RIVALRY
At the start of 2016, Chev Clarke's name meant very little to Bournemouth’s promising amateur Chris Billam-Smith.
But by the end of the year, Clarke would make a deep impact on the 26-year-old’s life, ruining his Christmas completely.
Billam-Smith would lose twice in the space of five months to the Gravesham boxer, who then pipped him to his dream spot with Team GB. With hopes of competing at an Olympic Games evaporating fast, he turned professional instead. Clarke, meanwhile, would represent GB at the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
But on November 7 at London’s Copper Box Arena, only a few miles from the scene of his second defeat to Clarke, the former WBO world champion will get a chance at revenge more than a decade in the making. The pair will clash in the main event of Zuffa Boxing 12 on Sky Sports in the UK and Paramount+ in the US.
“If I never got the chance to box him, it wouldn't bother me,” Billam-Smith tells The Ring. “But the fact I get the chance to box him now means I can put those 10 years to bed.”
The rivalry officially started at Liverpool’s Echo Arena in the final of the 2016 ABAs. Billam-Smith was about to face Ryan Hatton in the second semifinal and took the chance to have a quick look at the two men in the first. One of those was Clarke.
“I didn’t know much about him to be honest,” Billam-Smith recalls. “I knew he had come up from 81 kilograms to 91 kilograms where I was. He had been stopping a lot of people at 81, but then had a bit of time out and came back.
“So as I'm waiting in the wings of Liverpool Echo Arena for my semifinal against Hatton, I've warmed up in the changing room and I'm just moving around, but I'm watching his fight with Natty Nwenga … and he iced Natty out, hit him with a huge shot and stopped him.
“So I saw that just before I got in the ring to fight Hatton and I was like, ‘OK, right, I'm going to be boxing him tomorrow.’"
In the end, there was little to choose between Billam-Smith, of Poole ABC, and Clarke in the final, but it was the latter who got the decision. CBS, who had lost narrowly to Jack Massey at the same stage three years earlier, felt the familiar gut-punch of defeat.
“I thought I had boxed OK, it was close but I hadn’t been hurt so I thought I’d won to be honest,” he said. “But really GB was my goal and I knew I would get an assessment off the back of it, even though I hadn’t won.
“It was a long drive back from Liverpool to Bournemouth the next day, but I wasn’t sulking. It was done, I couldn’t go back and change the result, I just had to get better. My whole life revolved around the ABAs and GB assessments. I wanted to get on the Great Britain squad. I wasn’t thinking about being a professional boxer or anything like that, it was very much shorter term than that. It was like, I need to get on the GB squad and become a funded athlete.”
But Liverpool would not be the last he would see of Clarke that year as they met again in the final of the English Title Series at York Hall Bethnal Green. Again Billam-Smith beat Hatton in the semi but again he would come unstuck at the hands of the Jamaica-born former lorry driver.
“He beat me soundly that time,” Billam-Smith said. “I was demotivated at the time because I’d trained all summer for GB assessments, had a little break and then boxed Ryan Hatton. I wasn’t enjoying my boxing because I’d done a year straight just training and boxing, and by the time I got to Chev I was completely demotivated.”
Those feelings would be compounded in December, when the results of his GB assessment dropped through the door.
“I still remember that,” he said. “It was December 18, 2016, when I got the letter and it just said I had not been successful and that was my Christmas ruined.
“In the end there were three of us; me, Chev and Scott Forrest. Those two got on and I didn’t.”
Billam-Smith refused to give in and simply changed tact. Within nine months he would make his professional debut and kick off a very different quest.
The irony is that only Billam-Smith has reached the summit by becoming a pro world champion. Despite their history, Billam-Smith (22-2, 14 KOs) will start as a 3/1 (+300) favorite against Clarke (12-2, 9 KOs) at Copper Box.
“I'm so grateful that I never got the decisions in those ABA finals and I never got on GB,” he said. “It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Every setback I've had has driven me. I remember losing an amateur fight once, and then the Sunday morning I'll be back on the road running because I'm like, ‘I need to be better.’ That's just always been my mindset. It's just get better, get better, get better. I don't know where it comes from.
“I’m 36 now and it’s still the same. All of that with Chev happened 10 years ago, but now, for my own ego, I can put it all to bed. There's nothing to gain from this fight because if I go out there and ice out Chev in a round everyone's like, ‘Well, you're meant to do that … of course you did that, blah, blah, blah.’
“So there's nothing to gain from this fight from the boxing world's perspective. It's not guaranteeing me a title shot or anything like that, but it's a good fight.
“And most importantly it’s one I stay up for because of the past. He’s 2-0 up at the moment, but I can have the final say.”
Chris Billam-Smith and Cheavon Clarke are nearing a deal to headline a Zuffa Boxing card at the Copper Box Arena on November 7, sources tell Pro Boxing Fans’ @JonathanNagioff.
Announced: Chris Billam-Smith will fight Cheavon Clarke in a cruiserweight contest on November 7th at the Copper Box Arena, London in the main event of Zuffa Boxing 12 
ZACH PARKER TO ZUFFA BOXING
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