By Jim Dower: Former WBO welterweight champion Paul Williams (40-2, 28 KO’s) defeated Cuban Erislandy Lara (15-1-1, 10 KO’s) by a hugely unpopular 12 round majority decision on Saturday night at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Williams won the fight by the judges’ scores of 116-114, 115-114 and 114-114. The results were loudly booed, as the crowd saw Lara winning the fight. Indeed, Lara did appear to win the fight by at least four rounds on my scorecard.

Williams did a good job of pressuring Lara throughout the fight, but Williams was getting hit with hard straight left hands the entire night. It was almost sickening to see Lara tagging Williams round after round with lefts to the head. Williams showed no ability to block or get out of the way of the left hands, and it looked like he was trying to block shots with his head. Williams didn’t seem like the same fighter that beat Sergio Martinez in the past.

Williams was coming off of a 2nd round knockout defeat to Martinez last year and that knockout may have undermined Williams’ confidence. He didn’t fight with the same aggression that he had in the past. Of course, it could be that Williams just does poorly against southpaws like Lara. Martinez was a southpaw as well, and Williams never did get comfortable fighting him. If this is the case than Williams needs to stay far away from any southpaws from now on because he does poorly against them.

Williams did throw more punches than Lara, but it was Lara who was landing the cleaner and harder shots all night long.
With this win, Williams can now push for a third fight with Sergio Martinez. Williams wants to fight two more times and then retire. However, this wasn’t exactly the kind of fight that is going to make boxing fans eager to see Williams fight Martinez again.

If it had been Martinez in the ring with Williams tonight instead of Lara, I think Williams would have been taken out well before the 6th round. Williams it too wide open for shots and with the power that Martinez has, he’d put Williams in trouble sooner or later.