By Michael Collins: In a day of retirements, Ronald “Winky” Wright (51-6-1, 25 KO’s) has decided to finally hang up his gloves following his one-sided 10 round unanimous decision loss to highly hyped middleweight contender Peter Quillin last Saturday night. Wright, 40, was knockdown down in the 5th round and wasn’t ever really competitive in the fight. Shane Mosley also has reportedly retired today.
Wright announced his retirement on his twitter page today, saying “It was fun while it lasted. I did what I set out to day and that was to be great. Part of being a good boxer is knowing when to call it quits. If I can’t be the champion again, there’s no need to keep boxing. But I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for always supporting me.
Wright was one of the best junior middleweights in the game from 2001 to 2006, beating fighters like Shane Mosley, Bronco McKart, Felix Trindad and Ike Quartey. Wright came up short in fights against Fernando Vargas, Bernard Hopkins and Paul Williams..
Wright was unable to get any big money fights after his loss to Hopkins, and he waited perhaps too long for a big fight to fall into his lap. After the loss to Hopkins, Wright didn’t fight again until 2009, when he was beaten by Paul Williams in a 12 round decision loss. In hindsight, Wright should have kept busy during that time fighting whoever he could. Wright still had a lot of ability when he came back in the Williams fight, but he picked the wrong fighter to be facing after a two year layoff and should have taken a tune-up.
After the Williams loss, Wright again stopped fighting and stayed out of the ring for three years until last Saturday night when he came back against Quillin. For a fighter that had fought only once in the past five years, Wright didn’t look bad. However, he was rusty and fighting a large middleweight one division above his best weight class. It was a bad idea on Wright’s part to take the fight.
It’s hard to imagine that Wright will be retiring because he could still be a factor if he moved back down to junior middleweight. He’d give champions Cornelius Bundrage and Zaurbek Baysangurov a lot of problems, but he would need a few tune-ups before taking those fights if he wanted to be effective.