For Your Consideration: John Duddy v. Walid Smichet

The Duddy-Smichet fight in February was one of mild debate after it was over. For one thing, after sitting through the utterly excruciating Klitschko-Ibragimov main event, fight fans nationwide wondered why in the hell HBO couldn't have ponied up and televised Duddy-Smichet, the main undercard attraction at MSG. Sure, we got the great Joe Louis documentary that night, but watching Klitschko-Ibragimov after remembering the life and career of Louis made it even worse.

Duddy-Smichet was your typical John Duddy fight, except many at ringside were reported to have felt that Duddy was given a gift victory, one that would have preserved what most felt was a locked-in upcoming title shot against Kelly Pavlik.

Instead of Pavlik-Duddy, we got Pavlik-Lockett, a fight so grossly uncompetitive that it necessitated Pavlik-Hopkins (since Kelly couldn't have two straight lackluster matchups and stay a hot star). Looking back, it's too bad for Pavlik that his fight with Duddy wasn't made earlier this year. That's probably really stupid, but I don't think it's too outlandish. We might be currently dissing Pavlik-Lockett from October instead.

Anyway, Duddy-Smichet is a hell of a brawl and if you haven't seen it, here it is in its entirety.

Round one is in this first video, and if you click on the "Continue reading this post" link at the bottom of the post, you can view the rest of the fight inside.