Takeaway Billy has the taste for belts by Tom Podmore Oct 2nd 2007

Worcester's Midlands Area light-welterweight champion Billy Smith has set his sights on becoming the English ten stone champion in the next year before dropping down to lightweight and adding more belts to his collection. The twenty-nine-year-old traveller brushed off the gallant challenge of experienced Wolverhampton banger Carl Allen in a give-and take ten-round battle for the vacant Area 140lb title at the Birmingham ICC (International Convention Centre) earlier this month. Eighty-three fight Allen, who's crossed swords with the likes of current WBA champion Gavin Rees, British lightweight champion Jon Thaxton, British super-featherweight boss Carl Johanneson and former English champion Scott Lawton, never gives anyone an easy ride. Carl's intelligent boxing on the night meant he was never out contention – always looking dangerous with his looping punches – and after exchanged solid right hands in the second, the Wolverhampton man stung Smith heavily in the fourth with a straight right. Billy was forced to desperately hang on to his lead as the Pete Bowen-trained fighter, himself a former Midland Area champion in 1996, roared back in the later rounds. The Black Country puncher had a storming last six minutes, but his charge was too little too late and the Worcester hardman got a deserved 97-96 nod from Dudley official Sean Messer. “With the punches he produced, I could have given up if I didn't have the heart because he left me dazed a few times,” boasted 64-fight Smith. “It wasn't pretty but it was a win so I was happy to bounce back with a victory to regain my old title.” Errol Johnson-trained Smith is now a two-time Midland champion after the victory over 37-year-old Allen – a belt Billy first won with a ten-round decision over Coventry's Baz Carey in a cracker at the Leofric Hotel in March. They were set to duke it out for the fifth time in Birmingham but Carey, who is the only British boxer to have taken Commonwealth champion Amir Khan the distance as a professional, was forced to pull out a week before with an arm injury. Now the Worcestershire boxer wants the winner of the English title bout between Morden's former British champion Lenny Daws and Nigel Wright, which takes place on the undercard of Troy Ross' Commonwealth cruiserweight title defence against Mickey Steeds at the York Hall on November 14. "Having this title can open up a few doors for me and I want to go for the English light-welterweight title next," ambitious Smith, 10-53 (0), admitted. "I was supposed to be fighting Baz again but I'm sure that I had a tougher night with Carl because he is known as a knockout puncher, has a solid chin and has a very hard right hook. "Carl has been in with some excellent fighters over the years and he gave me a pretty tough fight." Smith, who trains at Errol Johnson's thriving gym in Wednesbury, will return to action for the first time since the fight in Birmingham on Thursday (October 4) when he faces unbeaten St Albans-based Irish lightweight Andrew Murray in an eight-rounder at the Café Royal in London. "The plan is to win as many as I can at light-welterweight, but I then want to drop down to 9st 9lbs (lightweight) in the future and see what happens from there. "I'm making the ten stone limit a little too easily – I'm regularly eating takeaways in the build up to fights,” said the iron-jawed brother of Ernie, the light-middleweight who's had almost 150 pro outings. "I don't intend on going up to welterweight, but by dropping down a weight should make me a more powerful fighter and one to be taken seriously as a title player. “Who knows how far I can go?”

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