It’s advantage Chris Billam-Smith, says coach Joe Goossen, ahead of the Bournemouth fighter’s WBO title fight with cruiserweight champion Lawrence Okolie.
Okolie and Billam-Smith were campmates under trainer Shane McGuigan, and have sparred some 300 rounds together, but Okolie is now being trained by SugarHill Steward and is having his second fight with the Detroit guru. Billam-Smith is still with McGuigan.
“I think it’s a big advantage, it’s happened to me,” said Goossen, talking about the fighters having worked with one another but one still being with the trainer who had worked with both. “In other words… he [McGuigan] knows his weaknesses and his strengths. I would say this, No.1 who’s the more talented fighter? If we had a scale of one to 10, 10 being best, let’s rate both guys. The former fighter [Okolie] is an eight, and Billam-Smith is a six. If he’s pushing towards a 10, and the other guy is just leaving at the halfway mark, you can make up some of that ground with McGuigan because he knows all the intricacies and proclivities of the former fighter. So that could bump him up to a seven, maybe even close to an eight because of that knowledge, if it’s employed. I mean, you gotta execute what you’re imploring your fighter to do.”
Goossen also feels that the fact the fight has even come to fruition means McGuigan must have an underlying confidence in his fighter taking the contest. Asked what McGuigan might have seen, Goossen said: “I’m not sure, but if we’re whittling it down to that one question or observation, he must feel very confident to put him in this fight. Now, you gotta remember opportunities are hard to come by. So, you may feel like, ‘Maybe I’d rather take this fight at a different time, but what if this opportunity’s not coming again? So we’ll take a little bit of a chance here, more than I’m confident in.’ That’s one of the variables… There’s other reasons why you take fights sometimes. Sometimes it’s the opportunity, you cannot pass it up even if you go, ‘Man, if I had another two, three fights with this guy, I’d feel a lot more confident putting him in with my former fighter. But you know what, this opportunity ain’t gonna come around again for a while, I gotta jump on it now.’”
WBA champion Arsen Goulamirian was in the frame but wasn’t happy to travel to Bournemouth for the fight and so McGuigan and Billam-Smith switched their sights to Okolie. No sooner had they targeted Lawrence than the champion had accepted and the fight as a voluntary and it was on.
“I guess the bottom line is there is a distinct advantage of forming a game plan against your former fighter because of you knowledge of what he can and cannot do,” Goossen continued. “Again, I’ve employed that when I had [Diego] Corrales, for the rematch against [Joel] Casamayor. You don’t think the fact that I had Casamayor for six, seven years didn’t play a big part in my strategy? Oh yeah. And it was a thorough thrashing of the first fight when Casamayor won it with me. But the second fight, we employed a strategy where I knew certain shortcomings of Casamayor that we just, without a doubt, recognised. So we were able to devise a nice strategy towards that end. That’s just one example. But yes, that does play a big part.”
Goossen, who worked with Ryan Garcia for his recent fight with Tank Davis, also thinks both fighters might benefit from the amount of rounds they have sparred over the years.
“If you know that other fighter, you know his weaknesses where some guys don’t,” Goossen concluded. “Even if you watch him in fights, just years of sparring with the guy, y’know, ‘Here’s one thing he hates, here’s something you can always get him with.’ So to kind of be led in that direction, drill it, and work on it. So, yeah, it’s a process but it certainly can pay off if you have that knowledge.”
