Paul Smith revealed in the build up to this fight that he actually came close to retirement at one point, he decided to carry on and ended up getting his big shot at the WBO world super middleweight championship against Arthur Abraham in Germany. The former Contender star was always going to have a tough job on his hands, going over to Germany and trying to win on points and lost by a unanimous decision to Abraham. One judges scored the bout 119-109 and the other two 117-111. As many British boxers have found in the past, against Klitschko in Germany and many fighters in the USA, you almost have to knock out your opponent to win. Unfortunately for Paul Smith he simply wasn’t convincing enough.
British pundits and Paul Smith himself have said he was ‘robbed’ and that he’d done enough to win the fight. That may be the case if he was fighting in England, unfortunately though, just doing enough was never going to be sufficient to beat Arthur Abraham in Germany. Abraham started well and definitely took the early rounds, he was moving well and landing some powerful punches. As the fight progressed though Paul Smith began to come in to it more, he was fighting well and landing regular punches. Abraham is however the past master at losing the round for the first 2 minutes and then stepping it up in the last minute to try and sway the judges, something he did with great effectiveness in this fight.
On balance, Paul Smith probably did do enough to win the fight overall but it was one of the fights where you could look at 8 of the rounds and make a case for either fighter winning them. Unfortunately for Paul Smitah the other 4 rounds were definitely won by Abraham meaning there was only ever going to be one winner in this fight.
