Clarke's Hat-Trick: Chev Stops Billam-Smith in Seven to Complete a Rivalry a Decade in the Making

Some fighters have an opponent who simply has their number. Chev Clarke has now beaten Chris Billam-Smith three times, twice as an amateur and once, on Saturday night at the Copper Box Arena in London, as a professional, when it mattered most. The third one was the most emphatic of the lot: a seventh-round stoppage that handed the former WBO cruiserweight champion the first knockdowns and the first stoppage defeat of his professional career. It did not start out looking like a coronation. The opening rounds were scrappy and attritional, the two men clinching and resetting, trading in bursts and never quite finding a rhythm. Referee Lee Every had to warn them to tidy up inside the first two minutes. Billam-Smith, the favourite and the bigger name, landed a sharp hook-cross combination in the second. Clarke answered with a thudding right hand that drew a roar from the crowd. By the fifth, Clarke was finding a home for that right hand, and it wobbled the former champion for the first time. Billam-Smith had his moments too, hurting Clarke with a right hand of his own in the sixth, but Clarke only shrugged, and the momentum was quietly sliding his way. Then came the seventh. Thirty seconds in, Clarke landed the right hand he had been setting up all night, and Billam-Smith went down for the first time in his professional life. He took his time getting up. Clarke went straight back to work. Billam-Smith went down again, tangled on the ropes, and this time the end was in sight. Another flurry, and Every stepped in to wave it off at one minute and 24 seconds of the round. Billam-Smith was on his feet and protesting immediately, and his trainer Shane McGuigan was furious with the decision, but the referee had seen enough, and the result will stand as one of the upsets of the year. The numbers tell the story of what Clarke has done. He moves to 13 wins and 2 defeats, with 10 knockouts. Billam-Smith falls to 22-3 with 14 knockouts, and the manner of it will sting more than the defeat itself. He had never been stopped before. He had never even been down before. Clarke, the former lorry driver turned Team GB Olympian, did both in the space of a single round. What makes it remarkable is where Clarke was 19 months ago. In April of last year he lost his British cruiserweight title to Viddal Riley, his second defeat in five months, and his career looked to be at a crossroads. He steadied himself, then climbed off the canvas twice to stop Jack Massey in Bournemouth five months ago, and that win earned him this shot. The history between these two runs deep. Clarke beat Billam-Smith twice in the amateurs in 2016, including in the National Championships final. Ten years later, he has completed the hat-trick on the biggest stage of his life, as a clear underdog, against a man ranked third in the world by The Ring. In the co-main event, Denzel Bentley outpointed Shane Mosley Jr by unanimous decision, and Clarke also picked up a Performance of the Night bonus. Billam-Smith will want the rematch. He has earned the right to ask for one. But on this night, the story belonged to Clarke, the underdog who had beaten this man twice before and knew, even when the oddsmakers did not, that he could do it a third time.