By Dave Cacciatore: It is hard not to like the affable Paul Williams. He has taken on some of the best in the world. He has shown some fantastic talent. He has never disgraced himself in the ring with a non-performance. He has been straight up when he speaks and not spoken about things he hasn’t been prepared to back up. He has usually been the man others avoided fighting, but not anymore.
Williams like his fellow American Kelly Pavlik have both stagnated. It was painfully evident in watching Erislandy Lara tag him over and over with overhand lefts to the side of his head. It was evident in his reactions to the shots he was taking. It was evident in Williams plodding and reaching after the elusive Cuban fighter in vain attempts to cut off the ring. It was evident in the six foot one inch super-welterweight being unable to box at distance. And it was most evident as the minutes and seconds of the fight passed without change.
As the rounds went by and the tenor of the fight remained the same, Williams and his team were powerless to stop the course they were on. It is clear from listening to their conversations between rounds that they thought they were losing. It is also equally clear that neither Williams nor his trainer George Peterson had any clue how to turn things around as seen by the last half of the fight.
Fortunately for the Punisher, the three judges at ringside though proved to be as trustworthy as Casey Anthony giving her resume to detectives. And like a jury who pardons any criminal, no one will ever be allowed to change the official result in the record book. However, the verdict as surprising and as repugnant as any in recent boxing history does not change the facts. It signals that Williams time at the top of the sport has most likely come to an end.
Much will be made about his talk of near retirement before the fight but this is something of a red herring. This is too easy of an escape and does not fit the facts that Paul Williams has demonstrated in the ring. Paul Williams has not caught a case of David Haye-fever in the ring, there was not a single point in the Lara fight or for that matter any of his other fights when he has looked more concerned with protecting his self image than with winning. Williams has not lost fights for a lack of effort. He is fighting as hard as he can, but he surely is not fighting as smart as he can. And the evidence just is not there that we will see any change on this in the future especially based on his post-fight comments to Max Kellerman.
The most concerning thing of all was the shots Williams was forced too absorb and his lack of reaction to them. The spark was never evident that he even knew what to do to avoid them. It would have been better if his post-fight admission were true that he was just being lazy in the ring. However, nothing that happened in 36 minutes he squared off with Lara nor anything he articulated to Kellerman suggest that he does know how to fix the problem. In fact, the frequency of Williams eating punches from Lara actually increased as the fight went on, particularly with the same looping left that Sergio Martinez put him to sleep with. That is suggestive that his career might already been irreparably damaged by exposure before the fight. Much like Jeff Lacy was never the same after tangling with Joe Calzaghe, the Lara fight was a sign that the Sergio Martinez fights probably did the same thing to Williams.
The HBO team is correct to wonder about Williams future in the ring. Not for his ability to defeat Sergio Martinez in a rubber match because that is a remote possibility at best but because no one wants to see a nice guy like Williams start to take beatings. He has given plenty to the sport and accomplished more than most. He has nothing to be ashamed of should he decide to make the Lara fight his last. But if he chooses to continue fighting he will no longer be the most avoided man in boxing. In fact, the opposite is the case, he will be a target for an up and comer like Canelo Alvarez or Lara in a rematch. The question now is if Paul Williams is smart enough to go out on his own terms because fighting any and all challengers he won’t. The book is out on how to fight Williams and neither he nor his trainer seem to have the slightest idea on how to write a new chapter.