P. Williams deserves alot of credit and much respect for going after the LT.-MW belt. While other fighters, who having problems finding good match-ups complain, sit and wait for soft-targets. PW is willing to move from division to division to stay active, make that paper and add to his credentials. It is obvious that no-one in the WW division is anxious or willing to fight him. And it would seem that his presence in the division makes Margarito appear more appealing as an opponent than ever before. Are we looking at the REAL "Most Feared Man In Boxing"?

I can't wait till Nov.29 to see how he handles the #2 LT.-MW Phillips to see if this guy can pull off the task of reigning in two divisions. If he wins, I am certain that he will find the WW division desolate of dance partners and will have no choice but to remain at LT.-MW just to find a dance partner.

In actuality, I like the idea of fighters working two divisions. There won't be many who would be willing to put it on the line against a varied division-list of opponents -- but the few who can .... should. At the very least it will reduce the Money-Dance Drama that is becoming all too common in the sport. It would seem, the purse negotiations are getting more entertaining than the actual fights.

The current trend is for fighter's to work their asses like hell to get to the top, then immediately start demanding high salaries to fight anymore -- this is helping to ruin boxing as a sport and with PPV fueling that motivation, it will only get worst.
Now, you purchase PPV ONLY to see the main event, because the undercards resemble Golden-Glove competitions at best. With the current economic crisis, someone should get the hint NOW, that the party is ending and many people would rather put food on their table and pay bills than buy PPV. As for me streaming has become my new best friend, because I refuse to pay for anymore sh*tty events which showcase mediocre talent at best, but demand premium price.

Bottom-line, PW has earned my respect as a fighter\Boxer who is willing to do what is necessary to stay competitive and achieve the next level in his development as a complete boxer. One who is willing to fight anyone who will come his way and not only for the money, but for the glory as well. We need more like that in the sport. And just because he is somewhat forced to move-up in weight to get a fight doesn't diminish the process in the least -- How many are willing to move-up to challenge anyone without there being a HUGE price-tag attached.

Win or lose -- I like his style.

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PWill is a P4P fighter for years to come!

No one at 147 wants any part of Williams.

Including Antonio Margarito!

I seriously don't know why Williams-Clottey hasn't happened. Clottey's in the same boat.

I really don't think anyone is interested in that fight. (Other than HArdcore fans)

Well, it's not like anyone particularly wanted to see Williams fight Koelle or Phillips. And I'm sure HBO would much rather have had Williams-Clottey than Williams-Phillips or Williams-Koelle. And I'm fairly sure that Williams would have made more money fighting Clottey than either of those other guys.

Everyone here hates Marg, but he fought all those guys that nobody wanted to fight because none of the names wanted to fight him. So what's wrong with Williams and Clottey doing the same?

And Clottey does have a belt.

To imply that Williams doesn't want to fight Clottey is laughable! Talk to Arum about that situation... He did not want to make that fight and instead of him attempting to make it he just laughed and said that "Williams will never fight Clottey". Trust me, If Arum and Clottey wanted Williams bad enough, they would have made the fight!

I have no reason to doubt what you're saying because I don't have any inside info, but it seems to me that Clottey is desperate to fight (I still don't think the guy has ever made enough money to even buy a tiny condo, much less retire on and he's getting up there in age) ANY big name. And I happen to think it would be a very competitive fight - easily the toughest of Williams' career alongside the Marg fight.

Do you have any inside info or are you just speculating? Have any tangible offers been made either way?

I think the toughest fight of PWills career is when Quintana schooled him.

Im not on the inside in anyway! I do know that Arum and Al Heyman have had trouble in the past... When it came down to deal this fight Arum was not willing to work with Heyman, there was some bad blood that spilled over from the possible Pavlik-Williams fight! I don't doubt Clottey wants this fight but Arum is holding him back and from what I hear, Clottey is very upset at his management team and probably should be!

Yes that was a bad night! PWill was very underprepared and paid the price!

But unlike PW, Clottey is in limbo and that's why he isn't even making enough paper to make mention of. I don't know the specifics of why that fight isn't happening but it would be a good one and one that I would like to see.



Arum is a BIG hinderance to many good fights happening. And his fighter's should come to realize that he isn't working in their best interests, he's working in his own interest. Boxers need both exposure and money to have a viable career and Clottey is being totally mismanaged. It seems that if you're not able to get that big gate, Arum just let's you rot in the corner while the clock is ticking.



I wouldn't go soo far as to say that Quintana schooled PW, I would say that he had a good gameplan to offset PW advantgages and followed through. I think that fight was more PW losing it than Quintana winning it. PW was getting locked into a comfort zone of what was working & winning fights and not having a plan for those instances when he had a fighter that would give him angles and good movement.

Up until the Quintana fight, PW was deadly if you were a stationary opponent, but if you give him a moving target, his punch output goes down and he has to move those big feet. Quintana exposed that weekness and exploited it well and the judges rightfully gave him the nod. But since that fight, PW has altered his comfort zone to include a tactic for those moving, sticking & jabbing opponents. So in essence it was a necessary evil -- PW accepted the outcome and made the necessary adjustments ... And you saw the results in PW\Quintana II ... No Contest.

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Paul Williams is a good fighter, he has stamina, freakish size, good fundamentals, activity and his ability to take punches is scary. However, I would have liked to have seen how the second Quintana fight would have played out had he not knocked him out. Whatever happened in the first fight, Williams could not adapt and it will be interesting to see how he handles a good boxer in the future.

If PWill wouldn't have knocked him out in the first then he would have knocked him out in the second...

I'd call that his most apathetic fight. Because it's not like Quintana ever hurt him - Marg did. And Clottey would too.

I think Williams is like Taylor in that he doesn't have the innate anger that most top guys have. And Williams just didn't have any drive that night at all.

LMFAO... Thats funny shit.. The main thing i noticed about williams is his chin. damn good paul.. damn good.

The only difference is Williams has a good win over a legit welter.

Williams is fast becoming one of my favourite fighters, I don't think he is the most naturally gifted or talented fighters, but I like his attitude and just comes across as a kid trying to do his best, plus from what I have seen I like the way he conducts himself as a person. I haven't heard something come out of him mouth that makes me cringe or think what a tool this guy is, he is just an all round likeable guy and I really appreciated the way when he lost to Quintana, he picked himself up, dusted himself off and destroyed him in a rematch.
I never thought much of the Quintana loss anyways, I remember downloading the fight and I was in a big minority. I remember having nearly the same card as Lederman (which I believe he was criticised for). I thought Quintana edged it, but I didn't think it was convincing or dominant as others did. I watched it with my dad as well, and he didn't think Quintana was overly dominant either. I picked Williams without a doubt in the rematch and that's just what happened.
I really like the guy, the only thing I didn't like is him moving all over boxing with different divisions, from welter, to middle and now to junior middle. I would like to see him settle and dominate a division. But he really is one of my favourites now, just his attitude that I have seen so far I really liked, and in his first big test with Margarito just watching him look so relaxed, confident and calm coming out in his entrance with Margarito but didn't look arrogant, or taken an opponent lightly.

You hit it right on the number! PWill is one of my favorites as well for all the reasons you mentioned... He doesn't look for money or anything like that! He just wants to fight and prove that he is the best fighter on the planet.

Paul Williams has one major problem.



The WBO.




Look at any fighter who's career is based on a WBO belt. It takes them twice or three times as long to be accepted because the WBO is not a legit body. Look how long it took Joe Calzaghe. Note he only became a noted champion AFTER he started fighting for the other belts. Same with Margarito...it took an IBF and WBA title fight for him to finally get him noticed.

It seems that a fighter only becomes legit when he holds one of the other belts. If Paul Williams is going to keep fighting for WBO belts, he's gonna be stuck taking on the Sergei Dzinduriks of the world.


If he was gonna be a major player at jr middle, which I think he would have, he should have gone straight after Vernon Forrest. If Forrest didn't want to fight him, he should have done it the old school way and got that WBC no.1 ranking.

Instead we're gonna see the exact same thing as at welter, a bunch of WBO bums which pad his record and give the other champs an excuse to avoid him.


Black

I love Williams, but it's hard to argue that he's looking for the very best fighters out there when he's fighting Koelle, Quintana twice, and now Phillips when he could be fighting better fighters at all three weight classes like Clottey, Cintron, Forrest, Winky, Abraham, Sturm, or Pavlik.

-He was offered the Pavlik fight and turned it down - not to say this was a bad move, just that he's definitely not looking to prove that he's the best at 160.
-I don't know if he could get Sturm or Abraham (given that Sturm was just offered a mountain of money to fight Abraham in Germany, I doubt it - though I see no reason why he couldn't get the loser of this fight - or the winner if Abraham doesn't want to fight Pavlik yet - we'll see).
-God knows Forrest doesn't have any better options right now.
-I know Cintron already turned down Williams once, but Cintron (who was willing to fight Marg twice) is running out of options as well at this point.
-I still think Clottey would love this fight given that he's too old to be turning down any big money or tv opportunities.
-We all know Winky'd fight him at 160.

Obviously Williams is being ducked by the small wws, but it's hard for me to believe that Phillips, Koelle, and Quintana are the toughest names from 147-160 that he could get in the ring.

I'll give Margarito a pass for not fighting Williams because he has fought all the top Welterweights

You can take Sturm, Abraham, and Pavlik out of this equation... PWill would be crazy to fight those guys as his first fight at 160! Kolle was simply a test to see How he would do at that weight. I think PWIll would be competitive with either 3 of those middleweights but at this point I would have to favor those guys!

-As for the welterweights, Williams wanted Margarito! Tony wants no part of that!

-As we discussed earlier, Clottey was not an option because Arum is a BITCH!

-Williams had a Cintron fight but Cintron pulled out... Honestly Cintron would be crazy to step in with Williams directly after Margarito!

-Quintana was the only willing Welterweight to step up and fight Williams... He Shocked Williams and Paul had no choice but to rematch the guy!

-As far as Forrest, Al Heyman manages both of these guys and I'm sure he had something to do with them not fighting. If he plays it smart and Williams gets by Phillips then a Williams-Forrest unification fight would be huge in Atlanta!

-Winky wright isn't an option because... Well he's just Winky Wright! If Pavlik-Williams had issues with the split then you know Winky would want a 80-20 cut!


I respect Margarito a great deal and if he wants to make some money before turning his gloves in the that's fine! I have no problem with that... BUT if he wants to consider himself the baddest Welterweight in the world, all he has to do is fight and defeat PWill. Simple as that!

And Quintana is a quality fighter with skills

Ha Ha, you must be kidding.

Other than Cotto, what "top welterweight" has Shitarito fought?

P4P fighters dont lose to Carlos Quintana.

My point is that Quintana isn't exactly a world beater and of Williams' last 4 fights, he's fought Quintana twice.

I'm not criticizing Williams, but at the same time I think it's hard to make a credible argument that he's going out of his way to fight the very best out there, which was the point of this thread.

Williams is fighting half assed guys waiting for a paycheck. That's fine. He beat Marg, and every big name (Cotto, DLH, Mosley) is clearly ducking him. But at the same time, it's not like he's calling out Forrest or Clottey. I mean, I follow boxing fairly religously and I've never heard of Koelle, and Phillips is a good solid B level fighter and nothing more. Are you or anyone here seriously telling me that Williams is going out of his way to fight the best? Seriously, it's Williams that has the HBO contract. He's the guy with power.

His revenge over Quntana was spectacular, a 1st round KO usually is. I wonder however how the fight would have looked had he not knocked him out. Obviously it's a stupid question to ask since it didn't but let's see what happens next time Williams fights a boxer and can't get him out of there. Will he be able to box or will he look dumbfounded again?

Wow Method! I guess your a HATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF? He been calling out Margarito! According to 75% of the people on this forum, he is the best! What should the guy do? You tell me?

Williams is very hard for me to evaluate. He looked good against Margarito for most of the fight, but got sloppy at the end and looked very hittable. He got outboxed by Quintana in the first fight, which showed alot of his flaws. He did the right thing by KO'ing him in the rematch, but it would have also been nice to see him in there more rounds to see if the first fight was more of a fluke. I think Verno will give PW more problems then people think,he has seen everything already, though I think Paul should get the victory in the end. I personally am not sold on PW yet, I will wait till he can get a few QUALITY wins under his belt before even mentioning him as a P4P fighter. Just my opinion.

You gys kill me by saying, "I wish PWILL didn't knock him out. It would have been great to see if Quintana could have outboxed him!" It wasn't like it was a lucky punch! PWill took care of business!

How bout Williams? Or Clottey? Or Cintron? Or Mosley in two months?

Other than PBF and ODLH, both of whom shamelessly ducked Margarito, what top welterweight hasn't he fought?

75% of the people on this forum equals 0% of anything meaningful or worthwhile. I don't mean to sound like Greg Leon or anything, but we're talking about an extremely small sample size here.

Seriously, I like Williams, but I suspect he's becoming the new flavor of the month here as much to discredit Margarito as for anything having to do with his own personal accomplishments to date.

He lost to Williams and won't fight a rematch. He was on his way to losing to Clottey, who wasn't considered a top welterweight when they fought, and won't fight a rematch. And Cintron is/was a bad joke.

I can't speak for others but I Like Williams beause I think he is one of the best fighters out right now!

Williams is a very good fighter who needs to make sure he keeps his focus.
I really appreciated that after he lost to Quintana, he didn't make any excuses. He simply said, "that wasn't me."
He exercised his rematch clause and took care of business in the rematch.

Nobody wants to fight Williams because he's a stylistic nightmare.
He's 6'3 with a reach almost as long as Lennox Lewis'...and he weighs 147 lbs and throws over 1,000 punches per fight.

Kudos to Margarito for not ducking him for a payday against Cotto (like so many others do).

You asked who he fought. You were implying he was a coward. I was informing you you were wrong.

Clottey was very much considered a top ww by people who knew boxing when they fought. He was just in the same boat as MArg in that NOBODY wanted to fight Clottey because he came into the ring at 170 and was impossible to hurt. Not only was Clottey big, but he was fast.

He should be screaming like hell to fight Clottey or Forrest or even Cintron, acknowledging that Cotto-Marg did 500K buys and the rematch will be even bigger and that there's no way Arum's going to fuck that up.

And little Zab Judah was still able to win rounds against him.

Yep, before he quit.

I have to say, I love Zab for taking that fight, but it was disappointing to see him give up like that. He just couldn't hurt the bigger man and he didn't want to take any more punishment. It's going to be damn hard for him to come back from that - if not impossible. At least at 140 he has a chance to get some quick kos.

I still want Zab vs. Pac-man or Zab vs. Hatton or Zab and I'd pick Zab against both.

Do You Fools Listen To Music Or Do You Just Skim Through It?


Ive told you before that Clottey aint gonna happen and thats not on PWill either! Forrest is managed by the same guy and a Cintron fight does absolutely nothing for Paul Williams

Why ain't Clottey going to happen? You said you don't have any inside info, so that means that you know about what I do. And I have no reason to believe that if Williams offered Clottey a decent payday that Clottey would turn it down. Clottey's beaten Judah, who is a bigger name than anyone on Williams' resume other than Marg.

And Cintron does much more for Williams than Quintana, Koelle, or Phillips.

Forrest would also be a huge feather in Williams' cap.

NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Williams showed interest in a Cottey fight and Arum didn't want anything to do wth it! Why do you think Clottey so mad at his team right now?

WILLIAMS HAD CINTRON!!!!! Cintron pulled out and Quintana was the replacement!


And I agree that Forrest would be good for Williams! I hope it can happen.

LMAO. Compared to those other world beaters Williams fought (and STILL had trouble with - Quintana) post Margarito

I don't recall Williams and Clottey getting all that close to making a fight, but not because Arum didn't want anything to do with it. I recall Clottey saying he wanted to fight Williams on November 29th, but no formal offers were made either way.

http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=16178

In response to my earlier news brief regarding WBO welterweight champion Paul Williams, BoxingScene.com was contacted by Vincent Scolpino, manager of IBF welterweight champ Joshua Clottey. Scolpino tells BoxingScene that Clottey is more than willing to fight Williams in a unification bout on November 29 on HBO. At the moment, Williams is without an opponent.

"Tell Williams to tell his promoter we want to get it on for November 29th. We will put our title up and take his on that night. All he has to do is to call our promoter Bob Arum and make it happen," Scolpino said.

http://www.boxinginsider.com/columns/is-pa...joshua-clottey/

Where is the new IBF champion right now? “He’s in Ghana now. Waiting for something to pop. Then he’ll come home (to the Bronx).”

Team Clottey is grateful for how Bob Arum has managed to turn Joshua’s career around with the big chance and huge victory over Zab Judah. “Bob is trying to make some things happen. Top Rank did what they said they would, they got us the Judah fight. They keep trying.”

But for some odd reason, Paul Williams, Al Haymon and the rest of Team Williams seem to want nothing to do with a unification bout against Joshua “The Hitter” Clottey.

I don't remember Arum putting the kibosh on this fight. Was an offer made by Goosen that they turned down? Perhaps you know something else that the rest of us don't, but I have not seen, heard, or read anything that led me to believe Arum stopped this fight from happening.

Lennox Lewis didn't get outboxed by Mcall or Rahman. I'm not saying Quintana is a bum but I just can't get the image of Williams looking dumbfounded against him not making any adjustments in tactics.

Excellent post JD.

I feel like I've read similar things from Clottey regarding Williams on virtually every website. Clottey literally has nobody to fight and Williams seems to be the most logical guy out there for him.

I think Williams takes the fight on points, but it would be a tough night out for Paul and it would definitely go 12 rounds. I guess Paul would just rather keep fighting second rate guys as long as HBO keeps paying him.