by David P. Greisman

Liam Smith had never faced anyone on the level of Canelo Alvarez before. He had never even faced anyone on a level or two below Alvarez either.

But when Alvarez’s camp called Smith’s, looking to fight at 154 pounds for Smith’s title, he took the opportunity.

It was too much for him. Try as he did, Alvarez knocked Smith down three times, finishing him with a brutal body shot that crumpled Smith to the ground in the ninth round.

“I gave it my best for what we had today,” Smith said afterward. “I fell short. Canelo was a probably a bit too sharp for me. I have to start somewhere, stepping up. Wwe tried to get all the names and we never got them. There’s world champions and there’s elite fighters. I think that was the case today. I have to start somewhere. That’s my first step toward the big names.”

He was knocked down in the seventh round from a right hand to the head, in the eighth from a left to the body and in the ninth from another hook to the body. 

“Every shot I took flush [before then], I thought, ‘That’s OK.' He punches, but it’s not like, ‘Whoa I can’t take one of them,’” Smith said. “The sixth round, the shot caught me around the back of the head and the next minute I was on the floor. I didn’t have much of a say on that one. And the body shots were body shots. He hit very well, but not a massive puncher. He’s very accurate with his shots. He’s got good speed and good timing. The last one was well placed.”

Even though Alvarez was taking over, Smith said, the Liverpudlian “still tried to press the fight.”

“I could’ve tried to settle for a points defeat, but it’s not in me as a person,” he said. “I hope you all enjoyed it.”

The 28-year-old is now 23-1-1 with 13 KOs. His title reign lasted about 11 months. Smith picked up a vacant belt, stripped from Demetrius Andrade, with a stoppage of John Thompson in October 2015. He then defended it with a seventh-round TKO of Kilrain Kelly and a two-round knockout of Predrag Radosevic.

Smith doesn’t expect Alvarez to hold onto the WBO belt, and he thinks he’ll be back in the title picture soon, with lessons learned from this defeat.

“One-hundred percent I think it’ll make me a better fighter,” Smith said. “I want to keep getting better and better and keep boxing high-level fighters. There’s a lot of them across the world in the light middleweight division. Canelo is the No. 1. All the ones below that, I’d like to get a win. You don’t think Canelo’s going to defend the title at 154. He’s probably going to move up. Frank [Warren, Smith’s promoter] can get me a win and then we can see what I can do from there. I’m going to learn from this experience.”

That’s good perspective, but it doesn’t mean he’s happy with the loss.

“I didn’t come here for that, believe me,” Smith said. “I had my heart set on winning. I’m not happy with losing. I didn’t come here just to say I competed with Canelo Alvarez in front of 50,000 people. I’m a man. All’s I have to say is I lost to a better fighter.”

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com