By Jim Slattengren: Ever since Paul Williams (37-1, 27 KOs) defeated Winky Wright by a one-sided 12-round decision a week ago, a lot of boxing fans are already predicting that Williams will win titles in the middleweight and super middleweight divisions before long. I’m not so sure, though. I think Williams is good enough to beat all the current welterweights in the division, and stay on top over there for as long as can make the weight.
However, when it comes to Williams moving up to fight someone like Pavlik, I can’t see Williams being able to beat him. Pavlik is a natural middleweight, hits much harder than Williams and has an excellent work rate of his own.
Williams’ style of fighting seems as if it’s made for Pavlik, because Williams likes to stand straight in front of his opponents and overwhelm them with punches. Pavlik does the exact same thing except that he likes to overwhelm his opponents with big power shots and not just massive amounts of punches.
Williams hasn’t fought anyone nearly as good as Pavlik in his career. Carlos Quintana, Wright, Verno Phillps and Antonio Margarito are all good fighters, but let’s be real about this, none of them have the power and the pressure that Pavlik tends to put on his opponents.
Margarito has always been a good pressure fighter but he doesn’t have the same kind of crushing power than Pavlik has. Pavlik throws straight punches compared to the lopping shots that Margarito likes to throw, meaning that Pavlik’s shots would get there much fast than Margarito’s shots.
In beating Wright last week, Williams showed that he was totally vulnerable to left hooks from Wright. If there’s one punch that Pavlik can throw with big power, it’s his left hook. If Williams had fought the way he did against Wright in a fight with Pavlik, I could see Williams being taken apart by Pavlik before long. Both fighters are about the same as far as hand speed goes, and their work rates aren’t that far behind each other either.
Pavlik may not throw quite as many punches as Williams, but then again Pavlik doesn’t have to because he hits so much harder than Williams and can take out his opponents so quickly. Whereas Williams would have to labor hard to get a victory b y throwing over 1000 punches, Pavlik has the power to end fights much quicker by landing one-fourth of the same amount of shots.
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