Smith fears his brothers having to tell him to quit

The predominantly Mersey crowd in the Manchester Arena will not care that their hero Liam Smith has subjected Chris eubank Jnr to false homophobic insinuations before tonight’s fight.

Nor that eubank was finally goaded by c-word insults into responding by accusing the third eldest of Liverpool’s beloved fighting Smith brothers of marital infidelity.

They will be behind Smith regardless of how that outburst might reflect on the proud Scouse fraternity.

So let us set aside the rant into which he was urged by PR men and TV announcers looking to boost Sky pay-per-view sales — and tune into the real Liam. The warrior whose biggest fear is that a bad defeat will consign him to a coffee table meeting at which his siblings will advise him to consider whether he wants to carry on boxing. ‘That’s what I dread most of all,’ Liam, 34, says about the possibility of the other three fighting Smith brothers calling a Sunday summit. ‘We did that with Paul. he lost to an opponent who would never have beaten him even a few months earlier so we sat him down and asked him to give real thought about what would be best for his future.

‘We are all very supportive of each other. That has been a big factor in our success. If the going gets tough we can turn to each other. We live a clean life. Never smoked. Rarely take a drink. Work hard.’

To be fair, eubank also embodies those virtues. As he proved when slaving down to the lowest weight of his professional career to face Conor Benn, albeit in vain. There has been no drastic weigh-cutting here. Although Smith is coming up a division to middleweight he was heavier than eubank at a pre-weigh-in visit to the scales. even so eubank will still be the bigger man coming to the ring tonight. As such he starts as marginal favourite in a fight likely to launch the winner towards world title challenges and spell the virtual end for the loser. eubank says: ‘The popular view seems to be that I have more to lose because Liam already has a couple of major world titles on his record and I do not. But my time is coming. By knockout.’ he is probably right. But as a safeguard in case Smith takes him the distance he would be wise to build a winning lead as a cushion against a tendency to fade a little late in a fight.