By Eric Thomas: Former two time WBO welterweight champion Paul Williams (40-2, 27 KO’s) needs to put in a good performance on February 18th against Nobuhiro ishida (24-6-2, 9 KO’s) to try and make up for his performance against Cuban Irislandy Lara in his questionable 12 round majority decision win over him last July.

Williams appeared to lose badly in that fight, but was given a win. Whether you agree with the decision or not the real problem for Williams was how much punishment he soaked up in that fight and how cleanly he was getting hit by the southpaw Lara.

Although Williams is a southpaw himself, he appears to be unused to fighting fellow southpaws and he’s struggled in his two fight against Sergio Martinez and the Lara fight. In hindsight, it was a bad decision for Williams to fight Lara after suffering a bad knockout loss to Martinez the fight before.

Williams needed a nice easy fight where he wouldn’t get hit so much instead of facing a faster, strong and better skilled fighter in Lara. The good thing is Williams still got the win and was able to keep his ranking of #5 WBA, #5 WBC and #6 WBO in the junior middleweight division. But the bad thing is he looked so terrible in winning the fight.

Williams hasn’t looked really good in two years since beating a 38-year-old Ronald “Winky” Wright by a lopsided 12 round decision.

Ishida, 36, is someone that Williams should do well against in theory. Ishida has better hand speed, but doesn’t hit very hard and can be outworked and out-boxed. Williams doesn’t have the power to run over this guy, so he’s going to have be prepared to take a certain amount of punishment here.

Ishida and Williams are both 6’1”, but Williams will have a whopping 12” inch reach advantage, not that he’ll use it.