{"id":21689,"date":"2025-10-28T10:26:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T10:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/royston-barney-smith-southampton-boxer-shines-in-first-test\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T10:26:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T10:26:20","slug":"royston-barney-smith-southampton-boxer-shines-in-first-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/royston-barney-smith-southampton-boxer-shines-in-first-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Royston Barney-Smith: Southampton boxer shines in first test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Royston Barney-Smith said that he &#8220;needed to step up to another gear&#8221; for Saturday&#8217;s win against Danny Quartermaine. <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Sugar Boy Roy&#8221; outclassed his opponent at the O2 Arena on the way to a unanimous decision, claiming the WBO and IBF European super-featherweight belts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At 21, Barney-Smith remains unbeaten with 15 wins to his name.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a big win and I&#8217;m really happy with the performance,&#8221; he told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It meant a lot to me after an injury and some time out the gym this year, I just knew I had to step everything up to another gear and I did that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Every round I was hurting him so I just knew it was going to be a matter of time before I took him out, I knew I was capable of winning this fight and I did that but It was lingering on my mind.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This fight was originally scheduled to take place earlier in the year on the south coast in Bournemouth. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Southampton&#8217;s Barney-Smith had to pull out of the contest after suffering a knee injury weeks before the event. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Throughout the contest he looked the superior operator, landing clean strikes as Quartermaine tried to make the bout awkward later on with erratic flurries forward.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Southpaw Barney-Smith &#8211; who is trained by Ben Davison &#8211; hurt his opponent on a couple of occasions before dropping him in the 10th and final round with a sweet short right hand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Quartermaine was a fighter the young talent had suggested to promoter Frank Warren as someone he wanted to test himself against. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I needed to have a breakthrough fight,&#8221; Barney-Smith added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve been screaming for one for the last year and I finally had my chance so I took it with both hands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to keep fighting journeymen who keep running away from me, I want to fight a live opponent and land some big shots and that is what I did tonight.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/boxing\/articles\/cwypk8p12r8o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Royston Barney-Smith said that he &#8220;needed to step up to another gear&#8221; for Saturday&#8217;s win against Danny Quartermaine. &#8220;Sugar Boy Roy&#8221; outclassed his opponent at the O2 Arena on the way to a unanimous decision, claiming the WBO and IBF European super-featherweight belts. At 21, Barney-Smith remains unbeaten with 15 wins to his name. &#8220;It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21691,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689\/revisions\/21691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}