TOMMY MCCARTHY WILL face British rival Chris Billam Smith at the second edition of Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Fight Camp after he stopped Romanian Alexandru Jur in a facile defence of his EBU European cruiserweight title.
Belfast’s McCarthy, now 18-2 (9KOS), dropped Jur (19-5, 7KOS) hard at the end of the fourth with a left hook to the body, and finished him off with a similar shot in the sixth to make a successful first defence.
🇮🇪 MAC ATTACK TOO STRONG FOR JUR 🇮🇪@Tommymac90 finishes off Alexandru Jur with a big body shot in the sixth round having already put his opponent on the canvas earlier in the fight 💪#McCarthyJur pic.twitter.com/xiBwWeoDVK
— Sky Sports Boxing (@SkySportsBoxing) May 15, 2021
Promoter Eddie Hearn confirmed during the post-fight procedure that McCarthy had already signed to face ‘The Gentleman’ Billam Smith (12-1, 10KOs) in his next outing, with McCarthy doing an impression of his soon-to-be-opponent before adding: “The Gentleman? I’ll bate the bollocks out of him no problem.”
There is no love lost between the Jamaican-Irishman and Bournemouth’s Billam Smith. Incidentally, the latter is trained by Shane McGuigan while McCarthy is Godfather to the son of Carl Frampton, Belfast’s former world champion whose long-running legal battle with the McGuigans was recently settled out of court.
👀 MCCARTHY TO FACE CBS NEXT 👀@Tommymac90 will face @ChrisBillam next and it is fair to say there is no love lost between the two camps, who wins that one? 🍿#McCarthyJur pic.twitter.com/4P71tjIo1j
— Sky Sports Boxing (@SkySportsBoxing) May 15, 2021
“I don’t know Chris Billam Smith”, McCarthy said, “but his coach is an eejit and birds of a feather flock together and rats run in packs. So, I don’t like Shane and I don’t like Chris.”
Hearn expects the Commonwealth and British European titles to be on the line along with McCarthy’s European belt, with a fight between the pair expected to take place towards the end of July.
