Cal’s the headline act now

TITLE SHOT: Smith CALLUM SMITH can remember the day he started dreaming about becoming a world champ.

The Liverpool fighter had just beaten brother Liam in a race home from school to grab the latest issue of Boxing News magazine.

Roy Jones Jnr was on the cover on March 7, 2003 just after he moved up to heavyweight to beat John Ruiz for the WBA title.

“I raced home from school to get Boxing News before Liam so I could read it first,” Smith told the Daily Star Sunday.

“I remember seeing the front cover and it was Roy Jones with his belt and the headline ‘Superman’.

“I imagined becoming a champion then.

“Every young footballer wants to win the World Cup and every young boxer wants to become a world champion.”

On Friday Smith gets his first chance to fulfil that dream when he takes on WBA super-middleweight champion George Groves.

The bout is the final of the World Boxing Super Series and the first major boxing event to be held in Saudi Arabia.

Smith laughed when it was suggested the usual ambition for boxers is to see their name up in lights in Las Vegas – not Jeddah.

He said: “If you told me years ago that I’d be in a big domestic showdown I wouldn’t have envisaged it being abroad in front of only a few English people.

“But in 20 years people are not going to remember where I won a world title, just that I won one.

“Regardless of where it is, it could be on the moon, it is still me against Groves for a world title.”