This Saturday, Chris Billam-Smith will find himself in the center of a soccer pitch rather than on the sidelines.

Inside the ring, which will be erected on the halfway line upon the turf where Tottenham Hotspur play their home fixtures, he will be cheered on by his family and friends rather than him cheering on his son, Frank, at his soccer practice. And it is something he will miss doing.

The dad stuff is not a chore for Billam-Smith but a privilege. Living away from home to train in London with coach Shane McGuigan means sacrifice and missing out on seeing his family grow. It also means that, when he is home, he fully embraces the normal roles a parent would take for granted, even competing with Friday afternoon traffic to pick Frank up from nursery prompts a warm glow as Billam-Smith discusses that with fondness, eagerness and anticipation of a job he is clearly excited by doing the following day.

As we talk, in the build-up to Billam-Smith’s April 26 fight with American banger Brandon Glanton, Billam-Smith is in camp and staying in his apartment. He is thinking of his family.

“It’s just, I just miss him so much,” the former WBO cruiserweight champion said. “Like, watching my little man grow up is my favorite thing. The highlight of my week is taking him to football [soccer] on a Saturday morning. We have a nice little routine. We go to the coffee shop and he gets his babycino and a cookie, ‘cos it’s Saturday and he’s about to go and run and burn it off. It is the highlight of my week. And he loves it as well.”

As much joy as Billam-Smith gets from his family, there is also a lingering guilt.

Frank is a toddler and wife, Mia, is pregnant again – due in late August or September. The fighter knows that his commitment to his sport, and providing his family with a level of financial security, comes at a cost, and it is derived from missing them and leaving Mia alone to cope in his absence.

“It affects all of us as a family,” said Billam-Smith. “But it’s my line of work. Plenty of people have done it before and have different situations with their own different careers, paths and work, and they have it a lot worse than we do. But obviously it doesn’t change the fact that we all miss each other and stuff like that.” 

It has been the long-term link up with McGuigan from which so much of Billam-Smith’s success has come. Billam-Smith’s thirst for knowledge has only increased as the years have gone by. He has never been the finished article and has always had a desire to improve and be coachable.

The work is not only restricted to the gym, strength and conditioning sessions, or the track. Both Billam-Smith and McGuigan study tape of their opponents. While much of the focus is on making Billam-Smith a more complete fighter, they do look for tendencies and dos and don’ts about the opponent.

“He [McGuigan] worries more about his own fighters and what they can do, to play to their strengths and stuff,” Billam-Smith said of his friend and coach. “And then he’ll look at them [the opponent]. He’s watched him [Glanton] a fair bit, but he’s not just gonna break it down in the sense of, ‘He always does this, he does that.’ “He’s not one like that. He’s like, ‘He’s got this good shot, but you can do this… so you need to be here,’ ‘and when he does this, he does that’ and he [McGuigan] breaks it down in his own way. It’s very tactical, but it’s not like trying to change us too much [based on what he sees]. He blends our style into the game plan very well, whoever it is. Like you might see someone knock someone out, for example, with a massive overhand right and he’ll say, ‘Yeah, but you won’t be in that position, you’ll see that coming, ‘cause you don’t make that mistake. You’d walk in, in that position’ or things like that. Shane’s very good at doing that. It’s a deep tactic thing, but it’s just so built in and natural. It’s not like he sits us down and says, ‘Look, they always do this.’ And it’s not like an NFL set play. It’s not that sort of thing.”

Sometimes they will study tape together, other times “CBS” will watch it in his apartment and message Shane things he sees and ask questions. 

This week, with the hard work done, the job is to complete final rehearsals, in conversation as much as anything else. 

Opening the show against Glanton on Saturday marks the first time Billam-Smith has gone into a fight without a world title around his waist in two years. Having scalped Lawrence Okolie and then defended against Mateusz Masternak and Richard Riakporhe, he lost his WBO belt in a unification fight with Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez last October in Saudi Arabia. While there is no belt on the line this weekend, and both he and Glanton are within touching distance of a shot at the WBC title, Billam-Smith admits the desire to get back on top has been fuel.

“It’s good to have that challenger mentality, but I also think that the confidence you do get [as the champion] is obviously beneficial as well. But the motivation is definitely there. There is a lot riding on this fight for me. I want to get back to fighting for world titles. I have to win this fight but I have to – at the same time – know that I’m the same fighter that went into the ring against ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez. I haven’t got worse because of a loss. I just have to improve the fighter I was and just keep building on that; me as a fighter, not me as a winner or a loser, if that makes sense.

“I think a lot of times people go, ‘Oh, actually I wasn’t at that level. I’m not that level’ just because they lost a fight. I think that it’s important to know that I’m still the same fighter I was that became world champion and I’ve just got to add to it and keep developing.”


Billam-Smith, who at 34 years of age has a 20-2 (13 KOs) record, has been clocking his training data for years, said the most important sign of how he feels comes through feeling strong in sparring and from his coach’s analysis of how he is looking. Weights and times are secondary, but through camp he sees his resting heart rate come down by as much as 10 beats per minute to the mid-40s as he sharpens his tools, opens his lungs and gets fitter. 

He is feeling good, too, which is why working his way into contention with the WBC is at the forefront of his mind rather than retirement. Losing to Ramirez did not have him questioning his future in the sport. It was never a matter of considering retirement, more a need to get back to where he was. 

“I just feel I’ve got untapped potential left and that’s my outlook on it. I’ve still got stuff left in the tank. I’ve still got good performances in me,” he stressed. “I’ve got improvements that can be made and that's how I look at it.

“If I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to improve from the last fight to this fight’ then I’d probably start considering it [retirement] and Shane would now, as well. Shane would know. And if I wasn’t getting annoyed in training about certain things, like about performing in the gym or on the pads with him, he’d be like, ‘There’s something wrong.’ ‘Cos that’s happened for the last eight years together. I think he’d see that the fire had gone and it’s definitely still there.” 

The desire is to defeat Glanton and head toward the winner of next week’s WBC bout between champion Badou Jack and champion-in-recess Noel Mikaeljan.

“I think that is the most realistic route back,” he admitted, knowing that plans are in place to match Jai Opetaia, the IBF champion, with WBA and WBO champion Ramirez later this year. “Obviously it’s a good thing that it’s a week after my fight. Opetaia has a fight lined up. Ramirez has [Yunier] Dorticos, who I believe he’s got to defend his WBA against as a mandatory, and then them two [Opetaia and Ramirez], I believe [they] want to fight each other. And I understand why. I would if I was in their position. Neither of them are going to want to fight me because I don’t offer another belt and their goal is what my goal was when I was a champion. 

“So then, for me, I’m a couple of fights away from fighting the winner of that fight if they all come through.” 

Billam-Smith is No. 4 with the WBC, Glanton is No. 5.

That is important to Billam-Smith, of course, and it could prove crucial for the direction of his career. But what matters most will be waiting for him at home on Saturday night.

Despite more than 60,000 fans flocking to the stadium for the main event, by the time Chris Eubank and Conor Benn are standing across the ring from one another on Saturday, Billam-Smith should be on the motorway home.

“I don’t think I’ll stay and watch it after my fight,” he said. “And that’s not because of the fight itself. It’s because I want to go home. Because of where I’m on the card. So if I’m on early and I can get out of the ring and get out of the stadium by nine half-nine, then I can probably get home for 12, one o’clock in the morning and see my son the next morning. It’s not a dig at them [the main eventers] or anything like that. It’s just there’s more important things in my life, my own family, and I’m sure when I look back and I think it’s because maybe where my career is it’s all focused on my fight. I’m sure if one of my gym-mates was on the undercard and I was going to watch them I’d be more interested in staying to watch the main event, but because I’m sort of in work mode, I guess, I’m less interested about any of the other fights on the card. If I was watching a gym-mate to be part of that amazing occasion, then I’d be super-excited for him to be part of such a big card. But when it’s myself, it doesn't matter to me. All I care about is winning my fight and getting home. That’s the most important thing to me, is my family. And that’s now the motivation. Before probably up to this point my motivation has been selfish. It’s been for my own wants and needs. It’s for my own ego, winning a world title, headlining shows, fighting for the unified world title. They’re selfish goals. But now my drive is obviously to win a world title again, but it’s more drive for my family and their future.

“The motivation’s changed and it’s not got any less. It’s just a different motivator and it’s probably more now and there’s more pressure because I can have a conversation with myself if I let myself down. But when you let your family down, it’s slightly different.

“That’s my motivating factor.”

By the time Saturday morning comes around, Frank’s soccer practice will have come and gone and Chris will have missed it, but perhaps Billam-Smith will be able to take his boy for a babycino and a cookie on Sunday morning.