STEPHEN and Liam Smith made sure brother Paul had the chance to complete a Smith family hat-trick on Friday night.
Stephen rattled through eight busy rounds with brave Yorkshireman Gavin Reid before ‘Beefy’ did a similar number one Walsall’s Darren Gethin.
Featherweight prospect ‘Swifty’ once again set the kind of pace that will make the rest of the domestic nine stone division shudder with fear.
The 24-year-old, now 8-0, got some valuable rounds in the tank from Reid who gamely kept going to the very end despite being peppered with shots from start to finish.
Incredibly it emerged afterwards that Smith had injured his back warming up in the dressing room before the fight started.
But his intensity level in the ring masked any problems he may have had.
Smith drove in hurtful body shots from the start and rolled in under Reid’s taller frame to bang in hooks with both hands.
By the end Reid was bleeding from the nose and cheek and referee Howard John Foster’s 79-73 score was a formality.
Likewise, ‘Beefy’ enjoyed a comfortably one-sided outing to move his tally to 4-0; the same referee scoring him as a 40-36 winner.
Smith improved as the fight progressed and by the final round was landing crunching uppercuts at will.
l Former world title contender Michael Jennings marked time, after British welterweight champion Kell Brook pulled out of his first defence due to illness, with a comfortable 80-72 points win over Hungarian champion Laszlo Komjathi.
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