By Paul Strauss: Paul Williams’ majority decision over Erislandy Lara left a foul, fetid, funky smell in everyone’s nostrils from the crowd in attendance to the fans viewing from home. An example of the lopsidedness of the fight could be garnered from the concern expressed by announcers Bob Paba, Max Kellerman and Roy Jones, Jr. They were genuinely concerned for the welfare of Williams, who was getting continuously clocked with overhand lefts from the southpaw Lara. Roy even commented that those type shots take years off a fighter’s life.
The scoring at best was execrable, detestable, or more simply very bad. From the very beginning, Lara was in charge. He demonstrated lessons learned from watching film of Sergio Martinez’ KO win over Williams. He repeatedly beat Williams to the punch, not just with light counters, but with crunching power shots to the head. Williams knew what was happening and why, but he was unable to do anything about it, other than to keep making the same mistakes again and again. He would come straight forward, hands down and simply try to drive Lara back.
Lara often would meet him head-on, but with speed and precision, stopping Williams in his tracks. At other times, he would simply shuffle out of range and then attack. When Williams tried to muscle him, he lost that battle as well and in fact found himself on the canvas on at least one occasion because he got out muscled.
When the atrocious decision was announced, there was a cacophony of boo’s. The three ringside announcers and unofficial score keeper Harold Letterman were incredulous. They couldn’t help but describe the results as flapdoodle or nonsense. Harold offered that the three judges in question were inexperienced and should not have been selected for such a high profile fight in the first place.
Across the country in California, a small but very violent war was about to commence. Ubano Antillon had been verbally shooting down Brandon Rios, expressing doubts about Rios’s abilities and toughness. Saturday night at the Home Deport Center in Carson, California he had to cross the rubicon, and commit himself irrevocably to the “Bam Bam” at hand. He was confident; afterall, he had come up short only twice in his impressive career and those times were against champions.
Antillon was convinced he could put this youngster in his place. He was just too tough and experienced for someone like Bam Bam, who he felt was hittable and vulnerable to the kind of attack he planned.
The fight broke out like a sprint. The fighter’s didn’t need an announcer, they needed a starting gun. Once the opening bell sounded, both lightweights rushed to meet each other and let leather fly at a blistering pace. Jabs, hooks, crosses, uppercuts and hybrid punches flew and landed with punishing results. Who was going to prove tougher? Who was going to land the big one first? This was the kind of battle where no one watching was willing to look away for a second for fear of missing something big.
Rios proved he had a bit of an edge in a couple of important areas. Most experts matched these two up pretty close, expressing Rios’ win over Acosta, their common opponent, as the big difference. The experts felt in most areas the two were very closely matched talent wise, as far as speed, strength, defense and power were concerned. Some thought whoever has the better chin might decide things. One other thing (the most important thing) that came into play was the fact that Rios punches were shorter and straight, and we all know what usually happens when someone has that advantage.
Antillon hurt Rios with some good body shots, but Rios first hurt Antillon with his signature punch, the left hook. But, it was his right hand that put Antillon away, just as it was against Acosta. The heavy handed Rios managed to muster enough force on his short shot to cause Antillon to fall forward, which is always a bad sign for the punch recipient. In the third round, when Antillon had just gone down for the second time on his face, he managed to beat the count, but the referee saw him wobbling to regain his balance, so he quickly jumped in to stop Rios from inflicting more damage.
Rios once again proved to be one of the most exciting fighters around. Next to Manny, he has those heavy hands that can seriously hurt an opponent even when his shots are off line a bit. During post fight goings on, promoter Bob Arum said that Rios is on his way to becoming a super star, and that he possibly could be fighting Manny Pacquiao in 2013. Let’s hope not. I for one don’t want Manny to be still fighting two years from now. I hope by then he will be comfortably retired as one of the greatest fighters ever.
In other results on the card:
Jhonny Gonzalez TKO 4 Tomas Villa
WBC featherweight title
Denis Douglin UD 6 Phillip McCants
Thomas Lamanna TKO 1 Reggie Jenkins
John Lennox TKO 2 Donnie Crawford
Brandon Quarles SD 4 Corey Preston
Rico Ramos KO 7 Akifumi Shimoda
WBA World super bantamweight title
Chris Arreola UD 10 Friday Ahunanya