By Manuel Perez: As much as I think that 37-year-old Ronald “Winky” Wright (51-4-1, 25 KOs) is a great fighter, I predict he’s going to get knocked out on Saturday night by the younger 27-year-old Paul Williams (36-1, 27 KOs) in their 12-round bout at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Wright may be known for his rock solid defense, his straight jab and his almost impregnable guard, but Williams has the youth, work rate and offense to defeat all of those assets of Wright.
Throwing close to 100 punches per round, Williams has a way of wearing down his opponents by sheer numbers. At the same time, he doesn’t focus on throwing the type of head shots that Wright is typically good at blocking, focusing more on throwing to the body. Williams used to be almost exclusively a head hunter until recently when he defeated Verno Phillips to pick up the interim World Boxing Organization (WBO) light middleweight title in November 2008.
Wright gets a lot of credit for his 12-round shutout over Felix Trinidad in 2004, in which Wright blocked most of Trinidad’s punches on his gloves the entire fight and gave him a boxing lesson by jabbing him all night long. However, since that time Wright has looked less than impressive in bouts again Sam Soliman, Jermain Taylor, Ike Quartey and Bernard Hopkins, winning two of those bouts, losing one and fighting to a draw in the other.
It was quickly discovered that Wright’s defense can be beaten by either throwing a lot of punches like the way Soliman was doing or by throwing fast shots and then getting out of range the way that both Taylor and Hopkins were doing against Wright.
Part of the reason that Wright has become less effective defensively is that he’s tried to mix it up with more offensively superior fighters in Taylor and Hopkins. Never known for having the greatest offensive skills, Wright has weakened his best asset – his great defense – by trying to throw more combinations against offensively skilled fighters like Hopkins and Taylor.
Perhaps Wright was trying to become more fan friendly by showing more offense, but in letting his hands go more, Wright had taken more punishment than he ever did before in his career. Based on how Wright chose to fight his last four opponents, I expect him to do more of the same on Saturday night by trying to out-punch Williams.
It’s a foolish thing to even consider trying because Williams is a special kind of athlete who’s both tall and has the ability to use his height to pound away at his opponents all night long from either the inside or outside. If Wright tries to match a young fighter like Williams punch for punch, I can’t see any good coming of this for Wright.
I think Wright still has a little left in the tank, but not enough stuff to beat a young fighter with the type of offense that Williams brings to the table. Williams will turn the fight into a war of attrition using his nonstop punching to make Wright look old.
This is the type of opponent that Wright would have had problems beating even in youth because of Williams high work rate. The fact is Williams won’t be hurt by Wrights’ shots and won’t be slowed down by Wrights’ jabs. This means that unless Wright can throw more punches than Williams then he’s going to lose. Wright can’t do that and never could.
Prediction: Williams by 9th round TKO
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