A REMATCH against Chris Billam-Smith is “the only way forward” for Lawrence Okolie, says his coach Sugar Hill.
The two cruiserweights met last weekend at AFC Bournemouth's Vitality Stadium in front of 15,000 supporters, largely in support of Billam-Smith. The tough and tough 12 rounds ended with a majority decision awarded to the crowd favorite.
A rematch clause was already in place for Okolie if he had lost and his cornerman said so Boxing News they want the second fight.
“Yeah, it’s the only way to go.” You don't want to wait and try to get a rematch. You want to get it right away. He obviously knows he did certain things [wrong] by the statements he made, and he wants to correct these things. He wants to write down his wrongs and he wants to be victorious.
What unfolded between the two fighting friends was a messy contest full of mishaps, point deductions and Billam-Smith running through everything Okolie had to offer. Is Hill confident the outcome can be reversed in a rematch?
“I’m very confident,” he replied.
“I was confident going into this fight. I'm going to be confident in every fight. This will be something that Lawrence and I will talk about and want to find out for him. Maybe if I said hello or something he would have gone back to how he did it in training camp and wouldn't be so anxious. I don't know. I'm a crazy thinker, so sometimes you have to think outside the box to make things work properly.
Okolie himself said BORN in his dressing room afterwards that revenge is what he wants next.
“It has to be. I'm not the type of person who's like, let these two guys fight, this and the other. We're coming back.
Billam-Smith agreed that Okolie would want nothing more than a chance at redemption.
“He is a proud man. He is a winner at heart and I think that makes sense for him and why not. You have a world title opportunity again, it's not like I made it go away clean. So yeah, I would expect him to want a rematch.
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