By Chris Williams: After beating Winky Wright (51-5, 25 KOs) black and blue last Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Paul Williams (37-1, 27 KOs) has suddenly become the hottest fighters in the welterweight, light middleweight and middleweight divisions. In fact, with Williams 6’2″ height and long reach, there’s no fighter safe from him other than perhaps cruiserweights and heavyweights. Williams mentioned after the fight that he’d be interested in facing an undefeated super middleweight if the fighter would come out of retirement to face him.
Obviously, Williams was referring to none other than Joe Calzaghe who retired recently rather than stick around and fight the young hungry lions like Chad Dawson, Andre Dirrell and Andre Ward. It looks as if you can add Williams’ name to the long list of fighters that would like to fight Calzaghe, and the thing of it is, I think Williams would easily beat Calzaghe if they were to fight. The same goes for Hopkins, who Williams would match up very well with.
I don’t see Calzaghe even considering a fight with Williams, because he knows what he’d be getting himself into if he were to take that fight. Williams threw over 1000 punches against Wright, and although Calzaghe has thrown a 1000 punches in a fight himself at one time, he doesn’t have the reach or the defensive ability to beat a fighter as good as Williams as far I can tell.
If Calzaghe would get up off the couch and take the fight with Williams, it would give Joe an excellent payday without the worry that would come with taking on a much bigger puncher like Dawson, Kelly Pavlik or Dirrell.
As for Hopkins, he’s been looking for a big fight recently and thus far he’s had no luck. There was talk of him fighting IBF cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek, but that fell through when the money offer wasn’t right for Adamek.
There’s really not a whole lot of fighters that Hopkins that can mix it up with that have the name that Williams has right now. A fight against Williams would likely have to be at a 170 catch weight, because asking Williams to put on 15 pounds on his bony frame might be a little too much for him to accomplish without slowing down.
However, 170 seems like an easy weight for him and I could see him making it by coming in around 165, and then using his speed and punch output to shut Hopkins down. Of course, Hopkins would probably come into the fight in the mid 180s, but his extra size would actually hurt him against a younger punching machine like Williams.
My hope is that Hopkins or Calzaghe look in Williams direction for a fight, although I doubt either of them will because of his danger that he would bring. No one wants to be beaten as bad as Wright was last Saturday, and Hopkins barely was able to beat Wright a couple of years ago.
Based on that fight, I see Williams beating Hopkins badly and winning every round of the fight if Bernard were to step up and fight him. He won’t though and neither will Calzaghe.
Comments are closed.