By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach trained undefeated middleweight contender Peter Quillin (26-0, 20 KO’s) and Ronald “Winky” Wright (51-5-1, 25 KO’s) will be going at it in an important crossroads fight for both guys on May 26th next month in a scheduled 10 round bout at a still to be determined venue in the United States. Quillin, 28, is the younger, stronger and faster fighter of the two. However, he doesn’t have anywhere near the same skill set as the 41-year-old Wright and that makes this fight a real toss up.

Quillin, #6 WBA, #15 WBO, has progressed very slowly in the last few years and still looks badly flawed despite having one of the better known trainers in Roach. Quillin can’t fight very well on the inside, doesn’t have much power to speak of with his left hand and still relies far too much on throwing pot shots with his right hand. He’s got good power but Quillin seems to have fallen in love with loading up on his right hand to try and take guys out with a single shot. He had good success with this flawed fighting strategy earlier in his career when he was facing 3rd tier opposition, but now that he’s facing semi-decent B level opposition, he’s getting hit a lot more because it’s taking him longer to knockout out the guys he’s being put in with.

Quillin has beaten the following fighters in the past year: Jesse Brinkley, Jason LeHoullier and Craig McEwan. Those are fringe level fighters but not true quality that can really test Quillin.

Wright hasn’t fought since April 2009 when he was beaten by Paul Williams by a 12 round unanimous decision. Wright couldn’t keep up with Williams’ nonstop punching in that fight and was outworked. Before that, Wright was beaten by Bernard Hopkins two years earlier by a 12 round unanimous decision. Taking all that time off obviously didn’t help Wright’s game anyway, but he kept waiting for a big fight to come around and nothing special was there for him.

Wright has a real chance in this fight if he can work his jab and beat Quillin by a decision. If Wright can jab as much as he did in defeating Felix Trinidada then he’ll beat Quillin no problem.