THE APEX TIMES
Former amateur rivals meet again at the Copper Box Arena on Nov. 7, with both men using a repeat head-to-head as a potential springboard toward the top of Zuffa Boxing’s cruiserweight division.
Zuffa Boxing will bring its next event, Zuffa Boxing 12, to the Copper Box Arena in Stratford, London, on Saturday, Nov. 7, with the main event pairing Chris Billam-Smith and Chev Clarke in a renewed cruiserweight rivalry.
Both fighters are coming off seventh-round stoppages on the Zuffa Boxing 7 card. Billam-Smith earned a corner stoppage TKO over Ryan Rozicki, while Clarke secured a come-from-behind stoppage over Jack Massey after getting off the canvas twice to eventually win in the seventh.
The Nov. 7 matchup is also a rematch with a long amateur thread. The release describes their first meeting as a National Championships final about a decade ago, when Clarke edged Billam-Smith by decision, setting up a decade-later professional re-run.
Zuffa Boxing framed the cruiserweight pairing as having “real championship ramifications,” with Billam-Smith looking to return to the division’s top tier after previously holding a world title and Clarke aiming to reach his first career “mountaintop” in his pro career.
The card’s co-main event features Denzel Bentley vs. Shane Mosley Jr. The event preview says Bentley previously claimed an interim world title via a seventh-round stoppage of Endry Saavedra, but was stripped of his belt ahead of the Mosley fight, while Mosley is noted for stopping Serhii Bohachuk in his Zuffa Boxing debut earlier this year.