by David P. Greisman

Let it be said for the record that Liam Smith wasn’t the first one to mention the cut he suffered in training camp in August. That came from his promoter, Frank Warren, in the post-fight press conference after Smith was knocked out by Canelo Alvarez on a body shot.

First, Warren praised his fighter before mentioning the injury.

“We brought Liverpool fighting Mexican. He comes to fight,” Warren said. “I don’t think he disgraced himself at all against a great fighter. It was competitive. It wasn’t totally one-sided. Liam, I think, could’ve done with maybe a fight a little bit higher level before he fought Canelo, but that is what he wanted. As soon as I mentioned the fight, that’s what he wanted, with no hesitation. He did get cut in sparring about five, six weeks ago. He didn’t spar at all after the cut. You take that into consideration, and it was a fantastic performance by him.”

The cut was on his forehead, between his eyes and above his nose, a wound that reopened against Alvarez. But that reopening wasn’t what affected him; it was what it meant for his training.

“I never sparred since the 12th of August,” Smith said after. “I wou;d’ve liked a little bit of better preparation. Sometimes I had Canelo in the positions I wanted him and I thought he was getting out too easy. I was missing too easy.”

“It wasn’t a nasty, nasty cut,” he said. “I’m a tough person. A cut that small was never going to put me out of a fight that I wanted for so long. A little nick four and a half weeks from the fight was never going to put me out. I said I’ll be fine. We tried our best to work around it. I think I was in pretty good shape.”

And he believes Canelo would’ve triumphed anyway.

“I still think it’d have been along the liens of the same outcome,” he said.

Eric Gomez, president of Golden Boy Promotions, said Smith’s camp notified them and “said it’s like a scratch.”

“He passed all the exams with the doctors,” Gomez said. “They did physicals and there was no issues with the cut.”

Now that the fight is over, Warren said he might’ve made a different decision.

“Benefit of a hindsight, I’d have pulled him out,” he said.

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