At the back end of May, its football team qualified for Europe for the first time in the club’s 127-year history. At the start of this week, an AFC Bournemouth player even scored for Brazil.

But, by comparison, things have been all quiet on the boxing front for more than a year now.

Chris Billam-Smith, Bournemouth’s only world champion of the past 76 years, has not boxed since April 2025, when he widely outpointed Brandon Glanton over 12 rounds on the undercard of the first fight between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

The 35-year-old Smith has not fought in Bournemouth since December 2023, when he stopped Mateusz Masternak in the eighth round. It was so long ago that Bournemouth’s Brazilian striker, Rayan, had only graduated high school a few months earlier.

But this Saturday night, Billam-Smith (21-2, 13 KOs) will make a potentially triumphant return to the seaside when he faces Ryan Rozicki (21-1-1, 20 KOs) at Bournemouth International Centre. Their fight will headline Zuffa Boxing’s first show on British soil.

“I’m so privileged and lucky that Zuffa see value in headlining with me for their first show,” Billam-Smith told The Ring. “I feel lucky and honored to have that opportunity and to have that pressure and expectation on me. It’s such a lucky position to be in and it’s not lost on me. It makes me want to work harder.

“But I like the pressure and expectation. I’ve always used the ‘pressure as a privilege’ mantra, the Billie Jean King quote, but I’ve sort of reframed it recently. Pressure is only present when there’s an opportunity present. That’s what I have against Rozicki in Bournemouth, back on Sky Sports.”

It was Sky Sports that broadcast his greatest night to date, when he dropped defending champion Lawrence Okolie three times en route to a points win in the middle of Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium. That victory secured him the WBO cruiserweight title in May 2023. Billam-Smith successfully defended that title twice.

Sky Sports’ coverage of the Billam-Smith-Rozicki undercard is set to begin at 7 p.m. BST in the UK. Paramount+ will stream the action in the United States and Rozicki’s native Canada, starting at 11:30 a.m. ET.

There are no belts on the line Saturday, when Billam-Smith, The Ring’s No.3-rated cruiserweight, faces the sixth-ranked Rozicki over 12 rounds. But whoever wins could well face Ring champion Jai Opetaia in his very next fight.

Having already achieved his dream of becoming world champion in the more traditional sense, Billam-Smith has now set his sights on simply beating the No. 1 fighter in the division, regardless of hardware. On signing his deal with Zuffa, Billam-Smith told The Ring that remains Opetaia.

“I’ve signed with Zuffa because Opetaia is seen as No.1 and I want to fight the best,” he said. “There’s really nothing more to it.”

The bookmakers have established Billam-Smith as a 3-1 favorite to beat Rozicki and therefore maintain his march toward Opetaia. But “The Gentleman” knows their fight will be violent, regardless of the odds.

“We first met for some promo work with Sky Sports a few months back,” Billam-Smith said of Rozicki. “And he told a story of when he was young some other kid asked him to fight. He told his dad and his dad said, ‘Go and fight him,’ but then he lost. So, his dad told him to go and fight the kid again. This happened a few times. I’m not a psychiatrist or anything, but it makes sense. This is a man who earned his respect through violence and that shows in the way he fights.

“He likes people who have got basically no footwork but throw bombs. He just seems very intense and very keen to be violent. That’s all part of the job, but not the be-all and end-all. To me, that is winning and I will be going out there to do what I need to win. And so far in my career, I’ve been unbeatable in Bournemouth.”