Today on Sky Sports Racing: Dream Composer and Equity Law clash | Racing News

Today on Sky Sports Racing: Dream Composer and Equity Law clash | Racing News



Monday night racing is on the agenda from Windsor, where Dream Composer clashes with Equity Law in the feature – live on Sky Sports Racing…

7.10 Windsor – Dream Composer clashes with Equity Law

James Evans saddles Dream Composer who comes here following his win at Epsom and will have to defy a 6lb higher mark for Harry Davies in this Fitzdares Sprint Series Handicap.

Jumbeau won a competitive handicap over course and distance in the first time cheekpieces and can be competitive under Tom Marquand.

The lightly raced Equity Law has been progressive on quick ground and could pose a huge threat in this competitive handicap, whilst Woolhampton goes for Rod Millman.

6.35 Windsor – Roi De France and Echo Lima feature

Roi De France finished second on debut at Lingfield and the John and Thady Gosden colt has a big chance in this Download The Racing App 43 Now Novice Stakes, if handling the lengthy break.

Ralph Beckett’s Echo Lima was third at Chepstow over seven furlongs and looks to build on that run. Keep an eye on Destructive, who didn’t have the best of times out in Meydan but should suit a return to British soil for trainer Michael Bell.

Drumstick was fourth when last seen and steps up to a mile today for Andrew Balding and Tom Marquand.

8.10 Windsor – Course specialist Lucentio returns

John and Thady Gosden’s Lucentio racked up two wins in a row over course and distance and can make it a hat-trick if defying the 4lb rise for this Download The Fitzdares App Now Handicap.

Royal runner Reaching High had excuses at Leicester last time and the switch back to a sounder surface could unlock some more improvement.

Arch Legend is of interest having won over course and distance under the same jockey, Oisin Murphy.

Watch every race from Windsor live on Sky Sports Racing on Monday 24 June.

Chris Billam-Smith on Oleksandr Usyk dream fight: ‘I asked Shane McGuigan to train me to beat him in 2017!’ | Boxing News

Chris Billam-Smith on Oleksandr Usyk dream fight: ‘I asked Shane McGuigan to train me to beat him in 2017!’ | Boxing News



Chris Billam-Smith is cultivating a remarkable habit of turning his dreams into a reality.

When he turned professional, he wasn’t touted as a future champion. Yet he managed to win Commonwealth, British and European titles.

Last year at the Vitality Stadium in his hometown of Bournemouth, he dethroned Lawrence Okolie to win the WBO cruiserweight world championship.

Billam-Smith want to fight in America and targets a Gilberto Ramirez world title unification after Richard Riakporhe triumph at Selhurst Park.

On Saturday, he defeated the only man to have previously beaten him as a pro, outscoring power-puncher Richard Riakporhe at Selhurst Park in south London to defend his world title.

“The child in me who loves football so much – I get to box in two Premier League football stadiums, it’s wild. It was beyond my wildest dreams at one point and now I’ve managed to do two, it’s just crazy,” he told Sky Sports.

But he’s not done with dreams yet. He believes he can beat any of his rival world champions now.

“[Jai] Opetaia’s a great fighter, they’re all great fighters. [Gilberto] ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez is probably the most underrated champion I’d say. What he did with [Arsen] Goulamirian was fantastic. [He’s] a really strong, durable southpaw, can counter-punch, got fast hands, a really good fighter,” he said.

Andy Scott and John Dennen deliver their verdict on Chris Billam-Smith’s win over Richard Riakporhe and wonder how far he can go in the sport.

But that is what he wants next – world title unifications. “It’s mad. That’s what we’re looking at now. We’re not interested in anything else, really, other than other champions,” Bilam-Smith continued.

Riakporhe was a dangerous challenger, but Billam-Smith answered his doubters with Saturday night’s performance.

“They don’t see everything else. They see the [Mateusz] Masternak fight. They see the [Armend] Xhoxhaj fight and me getting clipped and the Isaac [Chamberlain] war and they don’t see the ins and outs of the gym and I can turn it on when I need to,” he said.

“Xhoxhaj wasn’t a great performance, so everyone backed Lawrence. Masternak wasn’t a great performance, so everyone backed Richard, but mentally I can switch it on.

Chris Billam-Smith heaped praise on his ‘master’ trainer Shane McGuigan after they stuck to the game-plan to beat Richard Riakporhe.

“The Masternak fight was difficult, everything around it, the massive high [against Okolie] coming into that fight, going to a smaller venue, everyone’s expecting you to win.

“No one really cares about that fight, everyone wants to see me and Richard. All the talk was about Richard. And the same with the Xhoxhaj fight, everyone’s talking about what’s next. No one’s heard of him before. We’re only human, you can switch off, but big fights I can turn up every time.”

Despite the humble beginnings of his pro career, Billam-Smith can now dare to dream of going undisputed at cruiserweight.

If he keeps on winning, he could perhaps snare the biggest fight of all, if undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk decides to return to his former division.

Sky Sports’ Johnny Nelson is not convinced Oleksandr Usyk will drop back down to cruiserweight in the near future.

Usyk has publicly said he would consider returning to the division he has previously unified.

“If he comes back down, that’s wild. I said to Shane [McGuigan, his trainer] when I first joined the gym, we were talking about Usyk, [saying] he’s a special fighter. I was going: ‘You’re going to train me to beat him.’ I said that to him [in] 2017. I think I’d only had my debut,” Billam-Smith laughed.

“He’s a special fighter, it would be an honour to share the ring with him as it would ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez, as it would Opetaia. I’m enjoying my career.

“I’m not saying it’s an easy fight by any stretch of the imagination.

“What a special fighter. To share the ring with someone like him would be phenomenal. And as fighters we go in every fight believing we can win it.”

Richard Riakporhe’s rise from near death to Selhurst Park dream world title fight against Chris Billam-Smith | Boxing News

Richard Riakporhe’s rise from near death to Selhurst Park dream world title fight against Chris Billam-Smith | Boxing News



Selhurst Park is only a few miles from the Aylesbury Estate in south London, where Richard Riakporhe grew up.

But Riakporhe has come a terribly long way to reach this point when, on Saturday, he fights for a world title at the Crystal Palace ground.

To challenge for the WBO championship this weekend, live on Sky Sports, at the stadium of the football club he supports, in a rematch against British rival Chris Billam-Smith for him is the stuff of dreams.

It marks the culmination of a journey that he almost didn’t get to start. When he was just 15, Riakporhe was the victim of a stabbing that he was lucky to survive. He still bears the scar from that brush with death. It’s a reminder now of how he changed his whole life.

Chris Billam-Smith got a cold response from Richard Riakporhe when he predicted he will retain his WBO world title by knockout on Saturday night.

“I came off the streets straight into the boxing gym,” he told Sky Sports. “I came through the hard way.

“I learned like a true apprentice.”

The Lynn, the oldest boxing club in the country and an institution in south east London, set him on that new path.

“I fell in love with the sport. It gave me purpose, it gave me drive, it gave me something to do, kept me out of a lot of trouble and before you know it, before long I was actually competing for amateur championships,” Riakporhe said.

“I said you know what, I want to pursue my passion and my passion was boxing. I just felt like it was perfect for me and who I am as a human being. I’m very ambitious. I always wanted to work towards something in my life and it just matched everything.”

Don’t miss our latest episode of ‘The Gloves Are Off’ featuring cruiserweight rivals Chris Billam-Smith and Richard Riakporhe.

He didn’t even realise he had a unique quality that would subsequently mark him out as a professional – his fearsome punch power.

In his first amateur bout, he hesitated. He backpedalled.

“I didn’t want to get hit. I always believed as an amateur that everybody possessed the same power that I did. I thought it was normal to be able to punch like that. I didn’t want to get hit with that type of power so I was just always moving and then when I landed my shots the fight was over. I knocked him out in the first round,” Riakporhe recalled.

“It was a run of KOs. I remember going in the championships and knocking out everybody to get to the finals. I was known for being a big puncher from way back then.”

Billam-Smith, on his own quest to avenge his only career defeat against Riakporhe, believes he can turn the Londoner’s power-punching into a weakness. He thinks Riakporhe relies too much on that power, waiting for a knockout and giving up rounds. That Billam-Smith fully intends to exploit.

Ahead of Chris Billam-Smith’s WBO cruiserweight world title fight with Richard Riakporhe at Selhurst Park, take a look back at some of the biggest stadium fights in British boxing history.

Riakporhe naturally rejected that notion. “That’s complete nonsense,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter whether I’m being lazy or not, whether I’m winning the rounds or not. There are fights that I’ve been in where I didn’t come with the intention to win the rounds. I just wanted the knockout.

“I’ve hit so many people that I know that when I land my shots I will cause a lot of damage, even if they don’t get knocked out.”

He did acknowledge: “It’s a blessing to have a skill like that but it can be a curse at the same time. It can make you a bit lazy.

“I’ve gone back to the gym and I’ve rectified that laziness and that’s what makes me even more dangerous now.”

This fight will be Riakporhe’s first attempt to win a world title, but he has beaten Billam-Smith before.

The Toe2Toe panel discuss the WBO cruiserweight world title fight between Chris Billam-Smith and Richard Riakporhe and whether Riakporhe’s natural power will be a problem again for Billam-Smith’s shaky defence.

“He has to rectify the loss. He has to get one back,” the Londoner said. “He can’t live with his own failure and that’s the blemish on his record to me.

“Because guess what, it’s actually brought him back full circle to me.

“So what does that mean? Have you really progressed? Because if you’d really progressed you wouldn’t be having to see the ‘Midnight Train’ once again. But we’re back here.”

He added: “I’m not giving ‘The Gentleman’ no more chance. There’s not going to be no trilogy. This fight is where it ends. I’ll do it again and that’s it. There’ll be no third chance for him.”

For Riakporhe winning this fight would “would mean everything”.

Ellie Scotney and George Groves share what they believe could make the difference in Chris Billam-Smith’s fight against Richard Riakporhe.

“Because we had a goal and the goal was to become world champion and to move on from there. I never thought that I would be able to perform on the ground of my favourite football team. Just to be able to represent Crystal Palace was enough for me. That done it for me. For them to entrust me with their brand, what they represent, as a fellow south Londoner that is very humbling, very humbling for me,” he said.

“I will do everything to make sure I bring that title, not only to win it for myself but also to bring to hope to everybody in south London. Everybody has their individual fights, things that they’re going through that nobody knows, just to be a kind of reference to them.

“Like if I can do it coming from my background, all the things that I had to overcome, being stabbed when I was 15, nearly dying, being a product of my environment, being able to make it out, everything was always a fight and I just want to be that kind of reference to them. That I’m one of you. I’m no superstar.

“I’m just a normal guy. A normal working class guy that just had dreams and was ambitious and I made something of myself.

“You can also do the same too.”

Only 30 per cent of tickets remain for Billam-Smith vs Riakporhe. Get your tickets now via Boxxer.com.

Watch Chris Billam-Smith defend his WBO cruiserweight world title against Richard Riakporhe at Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park, live on Sky Sports on Saturday June 15; or Stream with NOW