By Jason Kim: Junior middleweight contender Paul Williams (40-2, 27 KO’s) will be looking to win impressively next month against 36-year-old middleweight contender Nobuhiro Ishida (24-6-2, 9 KO’s) in a scheduled 12 round bout at a venue still to be determined.

It’s interesting that Williams is being matched against a middleweight, since Williams is now fighting at junior middleweight and looked too weak at middleweight. However, Ishida, 36, isn’t much of a puncher and is mostly a pure boxer who doesn’t throw a lot of punches. He’s perfect for Williams to beat because he doesn’t have to worry about getting hit with anything big from Ishida.

Although Ishida did stop an overweight and rusty James Kirkland in the 1st round last October, that win was more of a fluke thing than a real indication of Ishida’s power or his quality as a fighter. Before that fight, Ishida had been beaten by Saul Alvarez’s brother, Rigoberto Alvarez by a 12 round decision in October 2010.

Williams hasn’t really looked good in quite some time dating back to his first fight against Sergio Martinez in December 2009. Even in that fight, Williams wasn’t exactly impressive and is fortunate to have been five the decision by a questionable 12 round majority decision. Williams looked terrible in the brief four round fight against Kermit Cintron last year, a fight which ended after Citron leaped/or fell out of the ring in the 4th and was injured. Williams won but just wasn’t even close to looking good.

In his rematch with Martinez, Williams was knocked cold in the 2nd round from a left hand from Martinez. And in his last fight, Williams took an enormous beating against Erislandy Lara but was given a very questionable 12 round majority decision. Two out of Williams’s last four fights has seen him win controversial decisions and you can easily make a case that he deserved to win both of those fights. Williams should be 1-3 in his last four fights coming into his bout against Ishida.

Ishida, 6’1”, is one of the tallest fighters that Williams has ever faced in his career and it will be interesting to see if this makes any difference in the fight. Probably not is my guess. Williams doesn’t height and reach and instead just plods forward.