By Michael Liberman: British heavyweight Danny Williams (38-6, 30 KOs) will return to the ring this Friday night against undefeated Konstantin Airich (9-0-1, 8 KOs) in a scheduled 8-round non-title bout at the Pabellon Lasearre, Baracaldo, in Pais Vasco, Spain. Williams, 34, the current BBBofC British heavyweight champion, won’t have his title on the line for this bout and appears to be using it as a stay busy fight. Williams is still in a career rebuilding stage, trying to recover from back to back losses to Matt Skelton and Audley Harrison in 2006. The loss to Harrison, whom he previous by a 12-round split decision in 2005, was especially disappointing because of the one-sided nature of the fight, with Harrison stopping a battered Williams in the 3rd round.
That fight more than anything seems to have taken the winds out of Williams sails, because he had been mentioned as an opponent for one of the heavyweight champions. Instead, however, Williams has had to settle for fighting 3rd tier opponents, beating Scott Gammer and Marcus McGee, and fighting to a 4-round no-contest with Oleg Platov, a smallish heavyweight from Ukraine. Williams was blitzed by Platov in the first round, and was hurt by a series of powerful right hands from the Ukrainian, looking on the verge of a knockout. However, Platov, 25, seemed to run out of gas, lucky for Williams, almost immediately after hurting Williams in the first round. This allowed Williams to come back in the 2nd and 3rd rounds, taking the fight to Platov and hurting him with right hands.
After opening a big cut over Platov’s left eye in the second round, Williams began to unload with some heavy artillery in the 3rd round as Platov, now exhausted looking, was both tired and blinded by the blood, to see many of the incoming shots from Williams. In the fourth round, Williams was unloading with tremendous shots, hurting Platov with rights and left hand bombs. Finally, at one point Platov seemed to have decided he’d had enough, and turned his back on Williams, as if saying “I quit.” The referee then stopped the fight, but instead of giving Williams a knockout victory he ruled it a no-contest because of the cut, which they had earlier ruled had been caused by a head butt. It was a disappointing result for Williams, first because there appeared to be no such head butt, and secondly since Williams lost out on what should have been a knockout victory.
On Friday night, Williams once again meets up with another Eastern European fighter in Konstantin Airich, and like Platov, he’s another smallish, German-based fighter with heavy hands. I’ve seen him fight on one occasion, against Andriy Oleinyk, whom he beat by an 8-round unanimous decision in April 2008. Airich looked decent, somewhat like a more in shape version of WBA heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev. However, unlike Chagaev, Airich tends to slug it out a little more, and best of all, he doesn’t run like Chagaev does. Then again, we may see some running from Airich when he starts tasting some of Williams’ still formidable power. Clearly, he’s not the type to back down from a fight, at least what I saw of him in that one fight.
He’ll probably stand and trade with Williams and try to beat him at his own game. If his chin is good, he might have enough to beat Williams, because he’s not exactly got the best chin himself. As for Williams, he needs to get through this bout and start looking to step it up against more well-known opponents, because he still has a little left in the tank. He looked good at times against Platov, showing that he still has tremendous power in either hand. I’m not sure why precisely he’s decided on facing these young lions, for he needs to be stepping it up against a top 10 opponent so he can try and work his way to a title shot.
If Williams can get his mind right, he’s got the power and the ability to beat many of the fighters in the top, possibly even some of the champions like Chagaev and Wladimir Klitschko. With his power, he’d give Klitschko a lot of problems if he were to connect with one of his right hands. However, Williams has his work cut out for him, because he’s wasted a lot of time the past two years since his lost to Harrison. Hopefully, with an impressive win over Airich on Friday night, we’ll see Williams making a move up in the ranks.