By Jim Dower: Paul Williams (40-2, 27 KOs) was forced to fight a lot harder than he expected to in defeating Erislandy Lara (15-1-1, 10 KO’s) by a 12 round majority decision on Saturday night at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Williams had been coming back from a 2nd round knockout loss in his last fight and there was concern by many boxing experts that Williams might be making a mistake by taking on another southpaw. However, Williams took Lara’s hard left hands all night long and kept coming forward to throw punches and win rounds.

Williams used his normal high volume punch attack to punish Lara every time he would get close. Like most fights, Williams failed to use his long reach to his benefit and instead opted to wade in close to Lara and tag him with short punches to the head body. Often Williams would grab Lara with one hand and tag him with the free one over and over again before the referee would step in to break the two fighters apart.

The decision ended up being controversial one because Lara was landing the cleaner shots all night long. However, the judges were likely looking at Williams’ constant forward motion and heavy pressure as the reason why they gave him a lot of rounds. Lara didn’t help himself by moving away and trying to avoid Williams’ attacks rather than standing his ground or being the one to come forward.

The final judges’ scores were 114-114, 115-114 and 116-114.

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Number #1 ranked World Boxing Association contender Rico Ramos (20-0, 11 KO’s) stopped WBA super bantamweight champion Akifumi Shimoda (23-3-1, 10 KO’s) in the 7th round to capture his WBA title.

Ramos was landing the harder shots throughout the fight, while Shimoda focused on applying constant pressure and throwing lots of shots in a machine gun fashion. However, Ramos timed Shimoda perfectly with a beautiful left hook to the head in the 7th that put him down for the count. The referee halted the fight at 2:26 of the round.

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Looking to get in another tune-up fight heavyweight contender Chris Arreola (33-2, 28 KO’s) pounded out a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision win over Friday Ahunanya (24-8-3, 13 KO’s). The final judges’ scores were 100-90, 99-91 and 99-91.

Arreola wasn’t happy with his performance after the fight, saying he wants to get in another tune-up bout in the next six weeks to try and improve. Arreola is one of the fighters in the running for a December bout against IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko.

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World Boxing Council featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez (48-7, 43 KO’s) added yet another knockout victory to his large collection with a 4th round stoppage of journeyman Tomas Villa (23-8-4, 14 KO’s). Gonzalez knocked Villa down with a nice right hand in the 4th, causing referee Eddie Cotton to halt the fight at 0:39 of the round. Gonzalez landed at will in the fight, throwing nice body shots and hooks to the head. Villa never stood a chance in this fight.

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In other action on the card:

Denis Douglin UD 6 Phillip McCants
Thomas Lamanna TKO 1 Reggie Jenkins
John Lennox TKO 2 Donnie Crawford
Brandon Quarles SD 4 Corey Preston