by Geoffrey Ciani – This week’s edition of On the Ropes Boxing Radio featured an exclusive interview with boxing trainer Ronnie Shields, who currently works with junior middleweight Kermit Cintron and heavyweight contender Tomasz Adamek. Adamek recently scored an impressive victory against Chris Arreola. Meanwhile, Cintron found himself on the losing end of a technical decision against Paul Williams in a bout that ended prematurely when Cintron fell through the ropes following a trip and was deemed unable to continue. Here is what Ronnie had to say on these recent events and more:
His views on the fight between Kermit Cintron and Paul Williams:
“Well, I saw Kermit Cintron winning the fight. That’s the number one thing and number two, all of a sudden I see him falling out of the ring. Then mayhem happened after that, but just looking at the fight, it seemed like to me that Paul Williams was afraid to engage with Kermit early on. Usually Paul Williams is one of these guys that come out blazing.. He said at the press conference that he was coming out blazing with both hands going like he always does, but all of a sudden when the fight started that didn’t happen and right away Kermit hit him with a couple of good shots and I know he felt the power and he realized that Kermit wasn’t one of these guys that you could just run in on, because otherwise you get knocked out. I think he was a little afraid of that.”
Regarding claims made by some fans and critics who accused Cintron of purposefully leaping out of the ring:
“Well I think people are just crazy. People come to conclusions sometimes, and don’t realize Kermit Cintron was in there to win the fight. You realize you can’t win the fight outside of the ring, you got to win the fight inside the ring and for him to jump out of the ring? I mean that is so ludicrous. Words just can’t describe how when you read some of these blogs how people are just so crazy. He’s winning the fight! Why would he do something like that when if he’s winning the fight? Clearly you can see what happened. His momentum carried him out of the ring. If you look at those ring ropes, they were so loose they weren’t even tied down.”
On the Cintron-Williams fight going to the cards even though it had not gone four complete rounds:
“Well, here’s the thing. The fight was fought under California rules. When the referee came in the back to give us the instructions, first thing he said out of his mouth was, ‘This fight is going to be fought under California rules’. So I didn’t know what the California rules were, so I had him explain to me the California rules, so he said, ‘After three rounds, you got to the scorecards if there’s an accident or something like that’. So I said, ‘Three rounds? Man, this is a twelve round fight. Why would you go to the scorecards after three rounds when it’s a twelve round fight?’ I said, ‘This should be fought under unified rules.’ So he said, ‘I don’t make the rules—that’s just the way they are’. So immediately what I did was, I went to Kermit’s lawyer who is also his manager, Josh Dugan. I went to Josh, I said, ‘Josh, you need to go take a look at this and talk to the commission because after three rounds if something happens they can go to the scorecards and I don’t like that’. So Josh went in, he talked to all of the commission and everybody and they told him, ‘Look, this fight is in California, it’s fought under our rules, no questions asked’.”
On how he believes the fight would have unfolded were it not for the unusual premature ending:
“The way Kermit was fighting, this fight might have lasted seven or eight rounds, probably into the ninth round at the most I would say, because Kermit was hitting this guy. He had already hurt him. That’s what started all of this. When Kermit hit him with that right hand and hurt him and Kermit was going after him, then he grabbed Kermit, but all night from the first round, that right hand was landing. I mean, he was just missing it, but then in the fourth round he finally landed and Paul Williams saw it. I think Kermit would have been putting together three and four punch combinations and I think he would have knocked Paul Williams out. Plain and simple, it would have been a knockout.”
On what impressed him most about Tomasz Adamek’s impressive victory against Chris Arreola:
“That he listened. That was my first time working with him, and everything we did in that gym Tomasz carried into the ring. I mean it was one of the first times I’ve ever trained someone who did it exactly the way I planned it out. I mean he did it so perfectly that for me, it was just a pleasure to sit there and watch this guy working. I said, ‘Man, he’s doing it just the way I designed it’. He did it perfectly.”
On whether he was worried that Adamek would get caught with a big punch at any point during that fight:
“Well, of course I was worried early. I was worried early on, but after about the seventh round I really saw that Tomasz was just too fast for Chris. Chris tried to pin him on the ropes, he tried to pin him in the corner, and Tomasz wasn’t having none of that. I was like there’s no way in the world he’s going to hit Tomasz. The jab was too good, the straight right hand was too good, and he kept Chris off balance the whole night. Early on I was really worried that at some point he was going to catch Tomasz, but like I said, Tomasz stuck with the plan, he started tripling up the jab which for him he had never really done before, and he started doing it and it really worked for him. He kept Chris off balance all night.”
On whether he wants Adamek to face David Haye next:
“The way I look at it is David Haye recently moved up to heavyweight in the last couple of years but he hasn’t really fought the top tier heavyweights. I mean I don’t call Valuev a top tier heavyweight because he is not but besides that, I haven’t seen anybody that he’s really beat and he’s not much bigger than Tomasz so he has good boxing skills, so people tell me, but he’s not as big as Tomasz is and he’s a former cruiserweight champion just like Tomasz. I figured look, the Klitschkos are big guys. It’s going to take some time for Tomasz to really be ready to fight those guys. You just can’t be thrown in to fight one of the Klitschkos. It takes a lot of strategy. In the meantime, you still have to bring Tomasz up a little bit more in order for him to compete with the Klitschkos, so in the meantime, hey, I figure David Haye would be the perfect guy for him because he’s not as big as the Klitschko brothers.”
His views on Floyd Mayweather’s dominant victory against Sugar Shane Mosley:
“It went exactly the way I thought it would happen. If Shane was going to win the fight it was going to have to happen in the first four rounds otherwise Floyd adapts very well to anybody he’s ever fought, so I didn’t think Shane was going to be able to keep up with missing the way Floyd was going to make him miss. Even the round Floyd got hurt in the second round, he came back for the last minute of that round and really said, hey, I can’t get close to this guy but if I just jab and let my hands go then this guy don’t have anything for me and when Shane tried hitting him with the right hand he started taking a step back and then counterpunching and that confused Shane for the rest of the night.”
His views on a potential match-up between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao:
“For Floyd and Manny Pacquiao, I don’t see anybody beating Floyd Mayweather Junior right now. I think Manny Pacquiao is a really, really good fighter but I think Floyd Mayweather is the best pound for pound fighter in the world today.”
Regarding how soon he would like to see Kermit Cintron back inside the ring:
“Well he’s ready to go now, you know. What we want to do first is do all we can to try and get this rematch. I think if you’re a boxing fan, you want to see what actually would have happened in that fourth round. Another thing is, Danny Goosen at the press conference was saying Paul Williams is a welterweight, but you know what? Kermit Cintron is a welterweight. Kermit, he moved up and fought Sergio Martinez. On three weeks notice he fought Sergio Martinez. Then he turned around and he fought Alfred Angulo. He beat Angulo. Kermit is really a welterweight. So Goosen was hollering, ‘Hey Paul Williams is a welterweight’ so we challenged him at the press conference. Okay let’s fight at welterweight. So we’re going to see what’s going to happen. He claims Paul Williams can make 147? You know Kermit Cintron has now problem at 147. So let’s do it at welterweight.”
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