By Jason Kim: In a showing of either incredible bravery or unbelievable folly, former undefeated WBO welterweight champion Paul Williams (33-1, 24 KOs) will be risking fate when he attempts to gain revenge for his earlier defeat on February 9th, at the hands of then challenger Carlos Quintana (25-1, 19 KOs) . Williams, 26, was beaten by a 12-round unanimous decision and made to look bad by the 31 year-old Quintana. Williams was quick to excuse away the defeat, pointing out that he wasn’t feeling at the top of his game and wasn’t able to get untracked for some reason.
Who knows? Perhaps Williams is right; Maybe he was just having an off night, but if that was the case you’d think that he would have had at least looked good in some of the rounds, wouldn’t you? That wasn’t the case, though, for Williams ended up being soundly out-boxed by the quicker, seemingly better skilled Quintana in almost every round of the fight. Having grown accustomed to wearing down his opponents with heavy pressure, Williams had no plan with what to do with Quintana when he failed to stand and trade with him like so many of Williams’ other opponents had done. Quintana wasn’t going to fall into that trap, and focused on circling the ring, and picking opportune times to rip into the gangly Williams with fast combinations.
Williams has never gotten over with speed in the past, as he is only so-so in terms of hand speed, and instead has to rely on his sheer work rate in order to vault him ahead in his fights. With Quintana not going along with the plan, William found himself playing a game of cat and mouse with him for much of the fight, having to chase him around and getting hit often by his quicker shots when he would be able to corner him. Quintana ended up giving Williams a tremendous boxing lesson and making him look nothing like a champion in the process.
Williams, and many of his legions of fans, seem to think that things will be different this time around, that he can somehow will himself to win based on his desire for revenge and a little hard work. However, Williams may just find that Quintana simply has his number and has the tools to beat his high pressure offensive fighting style. The reason Williams lost last time out wasn’t because he didn’t throw enough punches; the reason he lost was because he missed many of shots he threw, he was terrible at tracking the constantly moving Quintana down, and he was unable to block many of Quintana’s quick flurries.
The eventual judges’ scores: 116-112, 116-112 again and 115-113, were not really a clear picture of the actual fight that took place. Williams was hopelessly outclassed in pretty much every round, and no matter how many punches he threw, it wasn’t going to change the course of the fight. The reason being, Williams just didn’t have the speed, accuracy, movement or defense to beat Quintana. This isn’t a small thing that Williams can simply turn around with four months of training, from what I can see. These are major flaws that would likely take a fighter a year or more to fix, even a fighter of Williams’ class.
This is why it seems like such a bad move on Williams’ part to take the fight with Quintana after such a short period of time. Williams’ style of fighting may have served him well against fighters like Antonio Margarito, Sharmba Mitchell and Sergio Rios, but against a boxer-type like Quintana, who tends to use the entire ring to defend, set traps and pick his spots for attacks, Williams’ offense appears wholly unsuitable for the purpose at hand. I think Williams will find himself in the same soup as before, hoping to land massive numbers of shots against a slow-footed opponent, but then finding himself getting badly out-boxed like last time out.
Quintana simply has better boxing ability than Williams, better in almost every facet of his game. Perhaps if Williams had a withering body attack like Miguel Cotto, and maybe if Williams knew how to cut off the ring as good as Cotto, then possibly I could see Williams winning the fight. The problem is, he doesn’t, and this is why Quintana easily beat him last time out, and is the same reason why he’ll beat him this time as well.