The main event of tonight's HBO Boxing After Dark card was WBO strap-holder Paul Williams' first defense of the title he won in a split decision victory over Antonio Margarito. His opponent was once beaten Carlos Quintana, the victim of a highlight reel TKO loss to Miguel Cotto. Williams was an 8-1 favorite going into the fight and, if that wasn't enough, Max Kellerman tried to do his job of pushing the new house guy by boldly commenting that despite all the desire for a Mayweather-Cotto fight, Paul Williams was probably the biggest threat to Floyd Mayweather in the welterweight division. I hadn't seen Williams fight before, so I was looking forward to seeing what all the talk has been about.
The fight between southpaws was a very good one, and it didn't start all that slowly either. I'd heard a lot about Williams' work rate, but he wasn't showing it in the first round. Instead, it was Quintana who was trying to get work done early. He was crisper with the jab and landed highlight reel right hooks whenever Williams missed a straight left or tried to come in. Somewhat surprisingly, considering Paul Williams' height of 6'1, Quintana was much more effective from the outside in the first few rounds of the fight. Williams didn't really have his moments in the first round, and appeared to be looking for a chance to throw bigger shots than usual rather than fire at his usual volume.
After clearly getting the better of the first round, Quintana began to really heat up in the second. He continued to land the job more effectively when they boxed on the inside, and when Williams began to come in or tried to throw the left, Quintana was even more effective with the big right hook. Williams began to let fly a bit more, but still looked tentative overall and wasn't getting into a rhythm. The highlight reel hooks from Quintana were never answered over the course of the round, and Williams still hadn't opened up with the huge workrate I'd heard about. Quintana's punching was so clearly superior, I felt he'd earned a two point round.
After the second, Williams began to work his way back into the fight. Not by using the jab and the left from the outside, as one might expect for the taller fighter, but by revealing a little bit of his inner Sandy Saddler. Coming in fast he would bull and muscle Quintana around on the inside frequently, landing wining right and left hooks and uppercuts between brief attempts to fire long volleys from the outside. From the third to the sixth, Quintana was the better boxer on the outside and Williams the better brawler on the inside. I called the third and fifth rounds even, while giving Williams the fourth and the sixth. The rounds Williams won, he won by bulling the smaller man around on the inside and winging slapping hooks and uppercuts.
The second half of the fight was very difficult to judge. It was sometimes extremely difficult to decide between Quintana's occasional highlight reel right hooks and straight lefts from the outside (which no longer appeared to bother Williams or throw him out of his rhythm at all) and Williams muscular brawling and determined, if slapping punches. I felt that Quintana's occasional showings of a bit of power were not frequent or consistent enough to win rounds, and that Williams determination and volume punching had the edge in most of the rounds and that by the late rounds he was answering back effectively on a two or three to one basis for Quintana's power shots. I gave the ninth round to Quintana and had the tenth even, but gave the seventh, eighth, eleventh, and twelfth rounds to Williams. My final score for the fight was 116-114 Williams. The HBO card was 115-113 Williams.
When the final tally was in, the judges disagreed. Two scored it 116-114 for Quintana, and the third 115-113 from Quintana. Clearly, they favored his highlight reel power-punching and better than expect showing against the favorite over Williams' determined resilience and strong, brawling success on the inside. I can see scoring the fight that way, and don't find the judges decision too terribly off even though I scored it differently.
The real winner of the fight was Miguel Cotto, who dismantled Quintana in five. The real loser of the fight was Antonio Margarito, who lost the WBO title to Williams on a split decision. Cotto can now lay claim to having brutally destroyed a man good enough to win a title against a top ten welterweight. Margarito was unable to put together the kind of judge-impressing punches that would have allowed him to steal the decision from Williams.
There was no talk of Quintana fighting Mayweather and a statement of bald fact that a rematch with Cotto was unlikely. Personally, the fights I would like to see made more than anything would be a fight between Quintana and Margarito with the winner defending in a rematch with Williams. That would give Quintana another chance for positive exposure against a top ten welter, Margarito a chance at winning his title back, and Williams a chance to fight a tune up and correct the deficiencies that allowed this fight to be stolen from him by Quintana's ability to land impressive power shots throughout the fight.
It wouldn't hurt that both Quintana-Margarito and the winner's rematch with Williams would almost definitely be another pair of superb fights.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment