By Dan Ambrose: It doesn’t matter what Paul Williams (39-1, 27 KO’s), the simple reality of the situation is that he’s still likely going to be avoided by Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. if he beats WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (45-2-2, 24 KO’s) on November 20th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Williams, 29, already beat Martinez by a 12 round majority decision in their first fight a year ago in December 2009. Did anything change in terms of Williams getting any big money fights? Nope. Mayweather, Pacquiao and even Shane Mosley showed no interest in fighting Williams.

Instead of getting fights with those guys, Williams had to settle for fighting Kermit Cintron. And that was a terrible fight, marred by Cintron leaping out of the ring in the 4th round just when the fight was starting to get interesting. It’s hard to say whether Williams can beat Martinez again because he really didn’t prove that he was the better fighter a year ago. However, this fight is probably about the best Williams can expect to get. He needs to enjoy and hopefully make it interesting enough for a third and possibly a fourth fight between them.

The middleweight division needs more stars and ones that are actually willing to fight the other top fighters in the division. That’s been the whole problem with guys like Felix Sturm and Kelly Pavlik. Decent fighters, but they end up facing subpar opponents over and over again without taking on tough guys like Paul Williams. It’s good that HBO wanted to see the Williams-Martinez rematch, because both of them were looking to get other fights.

Martinez wanted to fight Mayweather, but of course he was ignored. Williams wanted to fight Pacquiao and Mayweather, but those fights weren’t going to happen. It’s come down to Williams and Martinez having few other options but each other.