Don’t miss the fight between Artur Beterbiev and Joe Smith Jr., Saturday at 10 p.m., on RDS2 and Sportish.

MONTREAL – Joe Smith Jr. was a boxer like America has known thousands of others when he found himself in the same ring as the legendary Bernard Hopkins in December 2016.

At the time, Hopkins was about to play one last fight that would allow him to retire on a high note. Twelve months earlier, he had lost by unanimous decision of the judges against Sergey Kovalev and had not looked very well. To be honest, he hadn’t even tried to win.

Hopkins and his team are therefore looking for a boxer with a good record and who is focused on the attack. Smith rose to prominence in the summer of 2016 beating Andrzej Fonfara after knocking him down twice in just 2:32. Plus, he was sloppy at 33-to-1!

Despite being 51 years old at the time, the crafty Hopkins shouldn’t have much difficulty countering the 27-year-old Smith. Although his father noticed that Fonfara exposed his chin after throwing a punch, many believe that he was simply lucky.

Smith is a local star in the New York and Long Island areas, but still has to get up every morning to go to work. A 90-minute journey that weighs more and more heavy. Especially when he leaves work to go straight to the gym to train.

During the last press conference promoting the fight, Hopkins did not fail to emphasize how “common” Smith is and how “special” he is. The ex-champion addresses the public by asking them who they would choose. The “common” or the “special”?

Smith could easily have gotten into a verbal sparring match with Hopkins. But he just stares at him, stoic. He knew full well that several had tried before him, but none had managed to destabilize him. He would be content to do what he knows best: work.

On fight night, Smith does what we’ve seen time and time again since: he rushes into his opponent and throws punches, relentless. It’s not always elegant, but it still manages to touch Hopkins. The more the rounds go by, the more Smith seems totally in control.

In the ninth, a coup de theater. Smith knocks Hopkins out of the ring with a series of punches. Finding himself head over heels, the legend is struggling to get up. Hopkins pleads that Smith pushed him, but that’s obviously not the case. Smith simply wiped it out. He destroyed it.

“How many guys have done this to her?” Top Rank President Todd duBoef recently asked during an interview with the renowned columnist. Yahoo! Sports Kevin Iol.

The answer is simple: absolutely no one. Before this fight, no boxer had managed to stop Hopkins before the limit. Not Roy Jones Jr. Not Jermaine Taylor. Not Joe Calzaghe. Not even Sergey Kovalev, who however crushed all his opponents in his path at that time.

“I always knew I could do it,” Smith said in several interviews over the years. It was the fight that opened all the doors for me. »

Yet in the days following that fight, Smith returned to his blue-collar job. Not because he was bored of his buddies of Local 66, but because he didn’t really have a choice.

“I worked for a few weeks and eventually realized I had some big fights coming,” Smith recalled in an interview with The Sun. The guys were all wondering what I was doing there after beating a legend. I needed to make some money! »

A father since he was 18, Smith is indeed not entitled to any rest. He came close to facing Adonis Stevenson after his win over Hopkins, but the fight never materialized. In the media, the fault is attributed to his promoter Joe DeGuardia.

Smith would eventually face Sullivan Barrera, but the sky fell on him in round two when the Cuban fractured his cheek. After a victory against Melvin Russell, he finds himself against the champion of the WBA Dmitrii Bivol. The defeat is however final.

But “The Common Man” does not despair. He went on to win against Jesse Hart and Eleider Alvarez and became WBO champion after beating Maxim Vlasov in April 2021. He quit his blue-collar job and owns his pruning company. And he even found time to study financial security. That said, he remained the same humble, easy-going guy.

“I could film myself fooling around and make some money doing it,” Smith said. It’s crazy anyway. Today, you have to be on social media and have followers. It takes a lot of effort. It’s a sport that ultimately pays very little, unless you’re a world champion. Maybe I should start over and play baseball! »