Paul Williams: Stylistically, He Can Be Corrected

Published

13 years ago

February 18, 2012

WilliamsLara Bailey4 Let's take the style and fighting mindset of two of the most iconic fighters and champions in boxing history, Muhammad Ali and “Smokin” Joe Frazier. Even the most casual boxing fans around not only know of them, but also have an inkling on how they fought and what their ring strategy was. What made their three fights so drama filled and epic was that they were equally as tough and determined as each other and they possessed conflicting boxing styles. ?

One's strength was the other's weakness and vice-versa.

Ali was tall and wanted to wage combat from the outside. He had a long reach and wanted to use the entire ring circumference to control the pace and tempo of the exchanges. Joe was just under six feet tall and had short stubby arms. In order for Frazier to be effective, he needed to get inside and take away Ali's reach. Once Joe was inside he could nullify Ali's long range hitting and force him to trade hooks and uppercuts, advantage Frazier. However, in order for Joe to gain the upper-hand, he needed to cut the ring off on Ali and either force him into a corner or get his back to the ropes and then cut loose. Easier said than done.

?The build and body structure of Muhammad and Joe had a lot to do with their style development and fighting mindset. In essence, Ali thought boxing entailed moving and using the ring and Joe believed boxing needed to be an inside war of attrition………Now, try and imagine Muhammad and Joe switching styles and ring concepts. Think of Ali forging the fight on the inside against every opponent he fought and Frazier circling and using the ring as he jabbed on the fly against every opponent he fought. Had that been the case, Ernie Terrell would've taken them both apart every time.Well I introduce you to junior middleweight Paul “The Punisher” Williams 40-2 (27). Williams stands a shade over 6' 1″ and has an 80 inch reach. In other words he's a half inch shorter than one of the greatest light heavyweight champions in history, Michael Spinks, and has a two inch longer reach. He's also a southpaw who can punch and has good hand speed. Yet, regardless of who his opponent has been since he defeated former junior middleweight title holder Winky Wright in 2009, Williams gives away every one of his physical advantages when he fights…and as a result every bout is tougher than it needs to be and he gets hit more than he should while absorbing unnecessary punishment in the process. ??Williams is tall for any fighter campaigning in between welterweight and middleweight. He has long arms and should make every opponent he faces pay a price for trying to get near him or inside. The problem is, he thinks he can punch like former welterweight champion Thomas Hearns, but clearly doesn't. He has the mindset of Joe Frazier and thinks he must attack every fighter in front of him. And if that's not bad enough, he often lets his hands drop as he's moving in and is a sitting duck for overhand lefts and rights, which incidentally cost him during his rematch with Sergio Martinez in 2010 (Martinez knocked Williams out with an overhand left in the second round).

Eight months after losing to Martinez, Williams won a gift decision over Erislandry Lara. Luckily for Paul, Lara isn't much of a puncher, because he was nailed repeatedly by overhand punches as he forced the fight. Tonight, he's fighting Nobuhiro Ishida 24-6-2 (9). Ishida is also 6' 1″ and is coming off two first round knockouts. He's not fast, but he's never been stopped and based on the result of his last two bouts, he probably believes he's a genuine life-taker. Couple that with how Williams looked last July against Lara and Ishida probably doesn't see himself as the opponent in this fight. And if he has a morsel of early success, would anyone be shocked if Williams made the fight tougher than it has to be?

?At this time Williams needs to reset and make some correctable adjustments stylistically if he wants to regain the junior middleweight or middleweight titles. When watching Paul work in the ring, it's obvious that he loves being inside throwing uppercuts and hooks. His problem is that he seldom if ever disguises them or sets them up, he leads with them. And to do that he must be close to his opponent and almost on top of them. And that's where he gets in trouble. By just walking in with his hands close to his body as he's looking to wing big looping shots, he gets hit cleanly by his opponent who can just reach out and nail him without moving his feet or facing any incoming jabs.

?Martinez and Lara must've been in shock during their recent bouts with Williams. As they had to be thinking, “Man, if this guy uses his reach and forces me to navigate it just in order to get off, I'd be in trouble.” But instead he allows shorter opponents to have an open causeway to nail him on the way in. And as long as he continues to not move his head or give them a different look, they can't miss the big target he presents.

“I feel like I always have to make a statement,” the 30-year-old Williams said this week. “I feel like every time I get in the ring, I've got to make a statement.” Sadly, that has to be construed as Paul thinking he needs a spectacular knockout to get back on track. This will give him the illusion that all he needs to do is focus in order to continue winning. And on that he would be mistaken. Williams needs to implement his height and range more into his game so he doesn't get hit as often and at the same time he would also score more cleanly because he'd be getting cleaner shots on fighters who have to address the physical gifts he was blessed with at birth. ??Someone needs to explain to Paul that you can actually hit an opponent harder who's coming to you than when you're pushing the fight. Joe Frazier and other swarmers had no choice but to push the fight. They were restricted by their height and short arms. Once inside Joe had the advantage, whereas Williams is at the disadvantage inside unless he picks his spots and creates openings instead of trying to blast his way in from bell-to-bell. Paul Williams doesn't need to be completely made over stylistically. He's a tremendous fighter who loves to fight and mix it up, so there's no way any trainer should attempt to remove that part of his game from of his holster. What they need to do is refine him and induce him to work more with what he has. Why should he toss aside physical assets that many world class fighters would give up five years of their life to own?

?Think about if you were a heavyweight contender today and were about to challenge title holder Wladimir Klitschko. Only, you knew during the fight you'd never have to address his height or reach, and you could reach and touch him without ever having to step towards him because he'll be right there in front of you. That would have to be a dream come true for any opponent of Wladimir. Well, that's the present Williams usually offers his opponents, resulting in his most recent bouts turning into herculean struggles.??It's amazing what Williams has accomplished as a fighter without much help. His natural talent and desire have been what's carried him. He's obviously loyal to his team almost to a fault and if he brought in an upper-tier trainer he'd be infinitely better within six months. ??In summary, Paul Williams needs to fight a little more scared and not look for a one-punch knockout with every shot he launches. He needs to make his opponents deal with his reach and cannot continue to offer his head on a silver platter for any contender he thinks he can just walk to as if they're handcuffed and then beat them down.

?These are correctable flaws for any fighter with the tools Williams possesses, but require extreme discipline on his part. Williams must grasp that he's not fighting to his optimum and be willing to do what's necessary to bring out the best in himself. Hopefully he isn't too set in his belief that his way is the only way, or that he's not physically damaged beyond repair. ??

Which isn't a given.

Frank Lotierzo can be contacted at GlovedFist@Gmail.com

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 308: SoCal Rivals Rocha and Curiel Rumble and More

Published

2 hours ago

December 13, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 308: SoCal Rivals Rocha and Curiel Rumble and More

Decades ago, battles between regional warriors were as common as freeway traffic in Los Angeles during rush hour.

Bobby Chacon repped San Fernando Valley, Mando Ramos came from the docks of San Pedro, Danny “Little Red” Lopez lived in Alhambra and Ruben “Maravilla Kid” Navarro hailed from East L.A. And they rumbled repeatedly with each other.

The boxing sphere in California has grown much larger despite the closure of boxing palaces such as the Olympic Auditorium, Hollywood Legion Stadium, Great Western Forum, the L.A. Coliseum and Wrigley Field.

Those were classic venues.

Today in the 21^st century boxing continues to grow.

Golden Boy Promotions presents SoCal regional rivals Santa Ana’s Alexis Rocha (25-2, 16 KOs) facing Hollywood’s Raul Curiel (15-0,13 KOs) in a welterweight clash on Saturday, Dec. 14, at Toyota Arena in Ontario, Calif. DAZN will stream the main card and YouTube.com the remainder.

Ontario is located in the Inland Empire known as the I.E.

Rocha, 27, has grown into a crowd favorite with a crowd-pleasing style developed by Orange County boxing trainer Hector Lopez. I remember his pro debut at Belasco Theater in downtown L.A. He obliterated his foe in three rounds and the small venue erupted with applause.

Wherever Rocha goes to fight, his fans follow.

“Anyone I face is trying to take food away from my family,” said Rocha.

Curiel, 29, has traveled a different road. As a former Mexican Olympian he took the slower road toward adapting to the professional style. Freddie Roach has refined the Mexican fighter’s style and so far, he remains unbeaten with a 10-fight knockout streak.

“I want to fight the best in the division,” said Curiel who is originally from Guadalajara.

Super welter hitters

Another top-notch fighter on the card is super welterweight Charles Conwell from Cleveland, Ohio. Conwell (20-0, 15 KOs) faces Argentina’s undefeated Gerardo Vergara (20-0, 13 KOs) in the co-main event.

Conwell may be the best kept secret in boxing and has been dominating foes for the past several years. He has solid defense, good power and is very strong for this weight class. Very Strong.

“I got to go out there and dominate,” said Conwell. “This is a fight that can lead me to a world championship fight.”

Golden Boy Promotions got lucky in picking up this fighter who could compete with any super welterweight out there. Anyone.

Vergara, 30, is another Argentine product and if you know anything about that South American country, they groom strong fighters with power. Think Marcos Maidana. This will be his first true test.

“I really hope he (Conwell) backs what he is saying,” said Vergara.

Marlen Esparza vs Arely Mucino

Former flyweight world titlists finally meet, but at super flyweight.

Olympic bronze medalist Marlen Esparza fights Mexico’s Arely Mucino in a fight that should have taken place years ago. Both are both coming off losses in title fights.

Esparza has the “fast hands” as she said and Mucino the “aggressive style” as she mentioned at the press conference on Thursday in Ontario.

It’s a 10-round affair and could mark the end for the loser.

Friday Night Fights

Undefeated middleweight Sadridden Akhmedov (14-0, 12 KOs) headlines a 360 Promotions and faces Raphael Igbokwe (17-5, 7 KOs) in the main event on Friday, Dec. 13, at Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, Calif. UFC Fight Pass will stream the event.

Akhmedov hails from Kazakhstan and if you remember legendary Gennady “Triple G” Golovkin also hails from that region. Tom Loeffler the head of 360 Promotions worked with GGG too among other legends.

Is Akhmedov the real deal?

Former American Olympian Carlos Balderas (14-2) is also on the card and fights veteran Cesar Villarraga (11-10-1) who has been known to upset favorites in the past.

Fights to Watch

Fri. UFC Fight Pass 7 p.m. Sadridden Akhmedov (14-0) vs Raphael Igbokwe (17-5).

Sat. DAZN 10:30 a.m. Murodjon Akhmadaliev (12-1) vs Ricardo Espinoza (30-4).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Alexis Rocha (25-2) vs Raul Curiel (15-0); Charles Conwell (20-0) vs Gerardo Vergara (20-0); Marlen Esparza (14-2) vs Arely Mucino (32-4-2).

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Cardoso, Nunez, and Akitsugi Bring Home the Bacon in Plant City

Published

2 days ago

December 11, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Cardoso-Nunez-and-Agitsuki-Bring-Home-the-Bacon-in-Plant-City

Cardoso, Nunez, and Akitsugi Bring Home the Bacon in Plant City

The final ShoBox event of 2025 played out tonight at the company’s regular staging ground in Plant City, Florida. When the smoke cleared, the “A-side” fighters in the featured bouts were 3-0 in step-up fights vs. battle-tested veterans, two of whom were former world title challengers. However, the victors in none of the three fights, with the arguable exception of lanky bantamweight Katsuma Akitsugi, made any great gain in public esteem.

In the main event, a lightweight affair, Jonhatan Cardoso, a 25-year-old Brazilian, earned a hard-fought, 10-round unanimous decision over Los Mochis, Mexico southpaw Eduardo Ramirez. The decision would have been acceptable to most neutral observers if it had been deemed a draw, but the Brazilian won by scores of 97-93 and 96-94 twice.

Cardoso, now 18-1 (15), had the crowd in his corner., This was his fourth straight appearance in Plant City. Ramirez, disadvantaged by being the smaller man with a shorter reach, declined to 28-5-3.

Co-Feature

In a 10-round featherweight fight that had no indelible moments, Luis Reynaldo Nunez advanced to 20-0 (13) with a workmanlike 10-round unanimous decision over Mexico’s Leonardo Baez. The judges had it 99-91 and 98-92 twice.

Nunez, from the Dominican Republic, is an economical fighter who fights behind a tight guard. Reputedly 85-5 as an amateur, he is managed by Sampson Lewkowicz who handles David Benavidez among others and trained by Bob Santos. Baez (22-5) was returning to the ring after a two-year hiatus.

Also

In a contest slated for “10,” ever-improving bantamweight Katsuma Akitsugi improved to 12-0 (3 KOs) with a sixth-round stoppage of Filipino import Aston Palicte (28-7-1). Akitsugi caught Palicte against the ropes and unleashed a flurry of punches climaxed by a right hook. Palicte went down and was unable to beat the count. The official time was 1:07 of round six.

This was the third straight win by stoppage for Akitsugi, a 27-year-old southpaw who trains at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym in LA under Roach’s assistant Eddie Hernandez. Palicte, who had been out of the ring for 16 months, is a former two-time world title challenger at superflyweight (115).

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Introducing Jaylan Phillips, Boxing’s Palindrome Man

Published

4 days ago

December 9, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Introducing-Jaylan-Phillips-Boxing's-Palindrome-Man

On Thursday, Nov. 28, as Americans hunkered down at the dinner table with family and friends for our annual Thanksgiving Day feast, junior welterweight Jaylan Phillips and his trainer Kevin Henry were up in the sky flying from Las Vegas to Rochester, New York. For their Thanksgiving repast, they were offered a tiny bag of peanuts.

Phillips would not have eaten too much had the opportunity presented itself. The next day was the weigh-in. On Saturday, the 30^th, he would compete in the 6-round main event of a small club show.

Phillips wasn’t brought to Rochester to win. His opponent, Wilfredo Flores, had a checkered career but he had once held a regional title and he lived in the general area. In boxing parlance, Jaylan Phillips was the “B” side. His role, from the promoter’s standpoint, was to fatten the record of the house fighter.

Jaylan didn’t follow the script. He won a unanimous decision over his 11-3-1 opponent, advancing his record to 4-3-4, and returned to Las Vegas with a new nickname, albeit not one of his own choosing or intended as a permanent accessory. This reporter dubbed him The Palindrome Man.

A palindrome is a word that spells the same backward and forward. Phillips’ current record is palindrome-ish.

It’s an odd record. One would be hard-pressed to find other active boxers with a slew of draws inside a small window of fights. It harks to the days, circa 1900, when some journeymen boxers accumulated as many draws as wins and losses combined.

A boxer with a 4-3-4 record would seem to be an unlikely candidate for a feature story, but the affable Jaylan Phillips is not your run-of-the-mill prizefighter.

Boxers, as we know, tend to be city folk, drawn from the black belts and the barrios of America’s urban places. Phillips grew up in Ebro, Florida, population 237 per the 2020 U.S. census. Ebro is in the Florida panhandle in the northwestern part of the state in a county that was dry until 2022. It is 23 miles due north of Panama City Beach but a world apart from the seaside Florida resort town and its pricey beachfront condos.

Of those 237 people, only five identified as African-American or black, or so it would be written, but the census-taker was obviously slothful. “That’s a crazy number,” says Phillips. “There has to be at least 40 or 50. And the reason I know that is that we are all related.”

“What does one do for excitement in Ebro?” we asked him. “Hunting, fishing, trapping, that sort of thing,” he said. And what does one trap? “Mostly raccoons,” he said, while adding that some of the elders in his extended family consider it a delicacy.

Phillips fought in Rochester, New York, on Saturday and was back in the gym in Las Vegas on Tuesday. He lives alone and does not own a car. His apartment, near UNLV, is three-and-a-half miles from the Top Rank Gym where he does most of his training. He jogs there and then jogs home again, this in a city where the temperature routinely exceeds 100 degrees for much of the year.

During his high school years, Phillips, now 25, concedes that he smoked a lot of weed and it impacted his grades. His interest in boxing was fueled by the exploits of Roy Jones Jr, another fighter with roots in the Florida panhandle. In his spare time, he enjoys watching tapes of old Sugar Ray Robinson fights which can be found on youtube. “He was the best,” says Phillips of Robinson who has been dead for 35 years, echoing an opinion that hasn’t diminished with the passage of time.

In his second pro fight, Phillips was thrust against a baby-faced novice from Cleveland, Abdullah Mason. Although Mason was only 17 years old, the Top Rank matchmaker did Jaylan no favors. He was still standing when the referee waived the fight off in the second round.

About the heavily-hyped Mason, Phillips says, “He’s a beast, like they say, but I would love to fight him again. I took that fight on two weeks’ notice. I’m confident the outcome would have been different if I had had a full camp.”

This observation will undoubtedly strike some as a delusion. Pound for pound, the precocious Mason just may be the top pro fighter in the world in his age group. But Jaylan isn’t lacking confidence which spills over when he talks about what lies ahead for him. “I will be a world champion,” he says matter-of-factly. And after boxing? “I see myself back home in Ebro living a humble life, hunting and fishing, but with a million dollars in the bank.”

If unswerving dedication and self-confidence are the keys to a successful boxing career, then Jaylan Phillips, notwithstanding his 4-3-4 record, is destined for big things. But here’s the rub:

“In boxing, it isn’t what you earn, but what you negotiate,” says the esteemed British boxing pundit Steve Bunce alluding to the importance of a well-connected manager. In a perfect world, each win would be stepping-stone to a bigger fight with a commensurately larger purse. But in this chaotic sport, a “B side” fighter who scores an upset in a low-level fight may actually be penalized for his “impertinence.” Promoters may be wary of using him again (the old “risk/reward” encumbrance) and, in a sport where it’s important for an up-and-comer to stay busy, his progress may be stalled.

Phillips doesn’t know when his next assignment will materialize, but regardless he will keep plugging along while setting an example that others who aspire to greatness would be wise to emulate.

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