{"id":7328,"date":"2024-11-25T19:13:50","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T19:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/chris-billam-smith-former-wbo-champion-targets-world-level-return\/"},"modified":"2024-11-25T19:13:50","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T19:13:50","slug":"chris-billam-smith-former-wbo-champion-targets-world-level-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/chris-billam-smith-former-wbo-champion-targets-world-level-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Billam-Smith: Former WBO champion targets ‘world level’ return"},"content":{"rendered":"


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‘The Gentleman’ said the injuries impacted his ability to see during the fight and that his vision was blurred for much of the latter stages.<\/p>\n

“I was just trying to process everything afterwards at the hospital,” Billam-Smith added.<\/p>\n

“I was in a lot of pain, I was cold and hadn\u2019t eaten anything. I couldn\u2019t move from bed to bed on my own and I needed support from others.<\/p>\n

“I just remember lying there and shaking because I hadn\u2019t eaten or had any water because of the morphine they were putting me on, which did absolutely nothing for the pain.<\/p>\n

“That type of fight was so draining mentally and physically, it was really hard to be honest.”<\/p>\n

Billam-Smith’s reign as world champion<\/a> lasted around a year and a half but despite losing his WBO title, he said that he is not done yet. <\/p>\n

The 34-year-old has previously held the British, Commonwealth and European cruiserweight titles.<\/p>\n

The current world champions in his division are Ramirez with the WBO and WBA, IBF champion Jai Opetaia, and Noel Mikaelian,who holds the WBC belt.<\/p>\n

Australian Opetaia has a mandatory defence of his title scheduled for January when he takes on undefeated German Huseyin Cinkara.<\/p>\n

Billam-Smith is plotting a potential course in 2025 but is also mindful of his life beyond the ring. He trains in London during pre-fight camp, spending significant time away from wife Mia and their young son in Bournemouth.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s likely that if Jai Opetaia comes through his next fight then he\u2019ll fight Zurdo [Ramirez] for three of the belts,” Billam-Smith said.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019d love to fight the other champion and then take on the winner of that fight if it is possible. It\u2019s got to be at world level either for an eliminator or a world title.<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t want to go on and on though, especially having a young family and spending a lot of time away from them is the hardest thing during camp, and missing the little man growing up.<\/p>\n

“But I\u2019ve got a couple more years left, I\u2019m not thinking about retiring now. I don\u2019t want to off the back of that defeat. I want to keep going and I\u2019ll learn from it, that\u2019s all I can do.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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‘The Gentleman’ said the injuries impacted his ability to see during the fight and that his vision was blurred for much of the latter stages. “I was just trying to process everything afterwards at the hospital,” Billam-Smith added. “I was in a lot of pain, I was cold and hadn\u2019t eaten anything. I couldn\u2019t move […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7328","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\/7328","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=7328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7330,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7328\/revisions\/7330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}