His focus stays on cruiserweight titles, familiar ground for him, even when not every meaningful fight available sits at 200 kilos.
Considered one of the names that continues to come back up is Deontay Wilder.
Billam-Smith doesn’t present it as a division change or a profession pivot. He talks about it as a particular fight. He has said openly that heavyweight as a division doesn’t suit him, and that view has not modified. Wilder, potentially at bridgerweight, is treated as an exception fairly than a rule.
“I don’t think my style suits heavyweight,” Billam-Smith said on the Toe2Toe podcast. “But I’d love that fight.”
He pointed to his past against punchers and fighters who rely heavily on a single power shot. In his view, those matchups have often played into his strengths fairly than exposing weaknesses.
“Once I’ve boxed punchers with a giant right hand, I’ve done alright,” he said. “Stylistically, that may be good for me.”
He also made it clear that this pondering doesn’t extend to the division as an entire. Billam-Smith mentioned only two scenarios that may pull him out of cruiserweight.
The primary involves Lawrence Okolie. Billam-Smith stays the one man to beat him as an expert. If Okolie were to win a heavyweight title, that result would carry renewed relevance, and a rematch would include an obvious narrative.
The second is Wilder. A known risk, a known name, and a fight that also commands attention despite Wilder’s recent setbacks.
For now, Billam-Smith’s focus stays at cruiserweight, where Noel Mikaelian holds the WBC title. That’s the belt he’s targeting next, and it represents a direct step back into the title picture.
The division, nevertheless, may not stay easy for long.
David Benavidez is anticipated to maneuver up from light heavyweight and challenge Ramirez for the WBA and WBO titles. If that fight happens, it reshapes the highest of the burden class immediately, and Billam-Smith might be watching closely.
“We wish him to beat Zurdo, and we would like to fight him,” Billam-Smith said. “That’s my view. That’s the team’s view.”
The reasoning is practical. If Benavidez beats Ramirez, he becomes a champion and likewise the person who beat the fighter who took Billam-Smith’s title. That link still carries weight in boxing, even when it’s left unspoken.
Billam-Smith sees the fight as close.
“I make Zurdo the favourite,” he said. “But it surely’s close. Very close. Benavidez has the style to beat him. Zurdo may be very clever.”
He didn’t dress it up.
“What a reputation,” he said. “What a fight.”
Big names still matter to him, as do the stages that include them. Las Vegas stays a part of the ambition fairly than a box already ticked.
“If I can go to Vegas, even higher,” he said. “That dream continues to be there.”
Above all of it sits Jai Opetaia, the IBF champion, and Billam-Smith has already mapped out how he desires to get there.
Mikaelian first. Then Benavidez. Then Opetaia. Three fights, moving in sequence, every one constructing toward the subsequent.
That route would give him titles, leverage, and control. It could put him into an Opetaia fight with something to barter with fairly than simply hope.
“In a perfect world, that may be the route,” he said.
He didn’t pretend that boxing normally allows ideal routes. He knows plans change quickly. However the direction is evident. He is selecting his shots, aware that the window doesn’t stay open ceaselessly.