Quintana solves Paul Williams for the WBO Welterweight Crown...Or Does He?

This is why they hold the fight...because on paper, Paul Williams blows out Carlos Quintana. Quintana came in an 8-1 underdog with a recent blowout loss to Miguel Cotto on his record (a 5th round TKO). That loss to Cotto was Quintana's first and he's taken away Joel Julio's "0", decisioning the til-then impressive, if crude, Julio. But coming off his blowout loss to Cotto, Quintana looked to be playing the victim's role to the widely regarded "most dangerous man in the division". But...that's not what happened.

Coming off a convincing win over Antonio Margarito, Paul Williams supplanted him as the best welterweight the casual fan never heard of and walked away with the WBO welterweight title in the process. This Saturday night on HBO's Boxing After Dark, in his first defense, he handed that title over to the unheralded and possibly underrated Carlos Quintana. I say possibly underrated because while Quintana looked good, clearly prepared, focused and willing to work hard even despite rather obvious exhaustion, I can't help but think that he caught Williams overconfident, underprepared and in the midst of a foolish and inexplicable attempt to retool his game.

Now...I should concede that it may be patently unfair to Quintana to fail to give him credit for solving Williams' punch -(literally)-every-2-seconds style. His game plan was clearly to avoid giving Williams time to set and throw. He moved almost constantly from side to side and in and out and despite being shorter by at least six inches (in wingspan too), being a southpaw to match Williams' southpaw stance allowed him to throw and land a right hook all night (which he did, to great effect). Williams was badly cut by the end of the fight and clearly the beaten (although strangely, the fresher) fighter. Quintana looked quicker and he stuck to his game plan all night long, even though it was noticeably exhausting him. He seemed to appreciate that standing still might be rewarded with the kind of constant barrage of multi-punch combinations that stymied Margarito...so he kept moving.

But...all of that said, the Williams who fought Quintana was definitely not the Williams who beat Margarito. While I've denounced punchcounts before, Williams' game is all about volume punching...so I'm afraid I have to give in to them here. This is because, what has made Williams so special (until now) is that at six foot two (at least) and making 148 pounds, he stands six to eight inches taller than his opponents and with his huge wingspan, he has a reach advantage of at least that much every time out. Now... Ed "Too Tall" Jones will tell you that reach advantage isn't everything, so it's the combination of that reach advantage and his work rate that make him so special. Until Saturday night, I'd never seen him throw fewer than 80 to 90 punches in a round. He has always been absolutely tireless, hungry and relentless. Until Saturday night.

Against Quintana, I dare to lapse to the statistics...but they tell the tale so clearly because they are so aberrant when compared to Williams' prior performances. Williams threw 552 total punches in 12 rounds, according to HBO's "final punchstat". A Quintana supporter might understandably suggest that his constant movement is the explanation. That is probably partially true, but there is no way that is all the story. Williams won every one of his first 33 fights by overwhelming his opponents with his reach advantage combined with his volume of punches. He approached or surpassed 100 punches in a round frequently. His full 12 round "final punchstat" numbers should read more like 1,000 + punches. Instead, he threw fewer than 50 punches a round. What could explain that? I watched the fight and while Quintana definitely came with the right game plan and executed it well, he needed Williams to cooperate in a way he never could have expected...that Williams would halve his punch output.

I think the Williams camp decided to fix something that wasn't broken. They unbelievably and inexplicably tinkered with Williams' fighting style. According to the HBO announcing crew, Williams talked before the fight about developing a "Bob Foster left hook" and unveiling that new punch against Quintana. If Bob Foster had had a Paul Williams punch output, he wouldn't have needed that left hook! Paul Williams doesn't need it either (and if he's developed it, he didn't show it). And yet, there he was...not moving his hands and waiting on his opponent. Why Williams or anyone advising him felt that he needed to change his style (which had won every fight of his professional career, including a major belt) and showcase his power (which he doesn't have) is the kind of mystery that prevents promising young fighters from becoming great hall of fame fighters.

You might ask, how can you say he doesn't have power when he's knocked out 24 of 33 opponents coming in? because if you punch half as hard as a hard puncher, but punch twice as often the cumulative effect is the same...and...punching a man 1,000 times in a fight tends to confuse, discourage and knock him down. If there is one lesson to be learned by Williams it's that he ought to dance with who brung him. He climbed to the top with a good chin, a huge reach advantage and an outrageous punch output. Not punching power. Not effective counterpunching. So...Paul, please go back to punching so often they can hardly count them and you'll get your belt back.

Are there alternate explanations? Sure. One was mentioned earlier, that Quintana outquicked him and moved so much that Williams couldn't set. While Quintana earned that belt fair and square, not only did he fight a different Williams than anyone had ever fought before, but another factor makes me wonder if Williams' wasn't otherwise diminished. The HBO team mentioned that Williams gained 16 or 17 pounds after the weigh in overnight to enter the ring at about 164 lbs. If that's true, then his sluggishness could also easily be explained. While he's always been considered something of a freak of nature to be fighting at 148 lbs standing 6'3" (he's listed at 6'1" in the official programs apparently, but there's no way...), he's looked leaner at fight time than he did in this fight. Perhaps the herculean effort to make weight is indeed all that logic dictates it must be for him. If so, the question becomes can his punch output (assuming he reverts to form) carry him nearly as far at 154 lbs or 160 lbs.? I tend to doubt it...especially after watching this fight. If he continues to make weight at 148 without complaint, maybe we won't have to have that answer for a while (though it's surely inevitable), but that question is going to linger for those of us who question why he looked so beatable against a guy who Miguel Cotto destroyed so thoroughly not so long ago.

As Max Kellerman mused at the fight's end, is Cotto really that great? Or is Williams really that beatable? While the answer is surely somewhere in the middle, I tend to think that even Miguel Cotto would have had major trouble with the Williams that Margarito fought. His punch output was merciless. He let his hands go so much that Margarito had too little time to set and throw. Punches were bouncing off his face to often that he couldn't think. Did Quintana's strategy of lateral movement really completely eliminate one of Williams' greatest assets? Not without his cooperation, it didn't. I had the fight identical to two of the three official judges at 116 -112 with the third scoring it 115-113 giving Quintana the unanimous decision. It was the right decision.

This leads me to weigh in on HBO's round-by-round analyst Harold Lederman. In years past, I always enjoyed Mr. Lederman's commentary...until I started scoring fights. While his pre-fight recitation of the rules feels almost compulsory for an HBO fight ("...the unified association of BAWXing commissions...JIM!), his poor scoring and ever-increasing occasionally nonsensical input is distracting. He gave Paul Williams an 11th round nod that was so completely wrong that I wondered if he'd even watched it. It's gotten to the point where not only do I disregard his opinion, but his input tends to undermine the legitimacy of the broadcast presentation. That's because if you're not scoring along and making your own judgment based on what you see as you go, by the time you get to fight's end, you tend not to remember exactly how you felt in each round. You trust Harold. And when Harold's wrong, you feel as if the judging must be wrong. And that's not right...if Harold's not right...and too often, he is indeed pretty clearly wrong. Now..because I've been listening to Harold's voice for so long and because he's a longstanding part of an HBO apparatus that I so greatly appreciate, I'm not ready to eviscerate him further and will continue to review his work and compare his take to my own and to the official judges in this highly subjective business...but my confidence definitely falters.

The presentation had an undercard fight that showcased the up-and-coming Andre Berto against an apparent hothouse flower of a fighter from Germany named Michel Trabant. Berto looked so much faster than Trabant that after about a minute into the first round, it was a foregone conclusion and the question became how much punishment the German could take. About six rounds worth, as it turns out. Trabant came in with a great record (43-2) apparently compiled against St. Pauli girls and was a decent punching bag. They said Trabant had never been down and he withstood some flush shots, for sure. Though he retired on his stool immediately after the sixth round, he indeed never went down despite taking so lopsided a beating in the third round that I scored it 10-8 without a knockdown (it was written on my card before Bob Papa, Max Kellerman and Harold Lederman all said that they hadn't scored it that way, but could see why any judge would). Berto looked world class, but Trabant didn't test him even remotely. Berto punched in combination well, offered good angles to the stationary Trabant (stepping around him to pummel him) and was so much faster than Trabant that he was toying with him rather obviously. Berto looks promising, but his toes-out duck walk footwork may cost him against an opponent who moves him backward. He is very quick though and throws a lot of different punches. HBO said he is very boxing/business savvy and even at age 24 is aware of the need to impress fans as he ascends toward challenging the elite of a very deep welterweight division. He had no trouble impressing this night. I had him ahead 60-53 at the time of the stoppage.

To wrap up on the Williams/Quintana fight...when I first saw Williams fight, I thought: "noone can beat this guy!" The fighter I saw that first night was the fighter that won the WBO belt from Antonio Margarito. That was not the fighter that Carlos Quintana beat on Saturday night. I hope they rematch Williams and Quintana so we can be sure of what we saw. Williams deserves that...and frankly so does Quintana.