Fighting in the shadow of Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s brilliant domination of Shane Mosley, Paul Williams had a major opportunity to establish himself as the biggest threat to Mayweather barring a showdown with Manny Pacquiao later this year.
Unfortunately for Williams, his fight with Kermit Cintron Saturday night at the Home Depot Center was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Rather than score an impressive win, Williams appeared to sleepwalk through the rounds before a tangling of the boxers’ bodies resulted in Cintron spilling through the ropes and all the way down to the floor. Injuring himself in the fall, Cintron was unable to return to the ring, and Williams was lucky to escape with a win on a technical decision.
A bout that looked like a war on paper started slow, with neither Williams nor Cintron asserting himself early. It was an odd strategy for Williams, given that Cintron’s only official losses came at the hands of Antonio Margarito, who twice chased down and pummeled him into submission. Averaging a hundred thrown punches a round, Williams is considered by most to be the very best pressure fighter on the pound-for-pound list.
Cintron took the first round with the more effective power shots. After trading jabs, Williams managed to catch Cintron with an uppercut across the nose. Cintron responded by coming over a straight left hand with a clubbing right hand, followed by an uppercut and a left hook that snapped Williams’ head sideways. Williams later came back with a left hand to the head and one to the body. He next hit Cintron with a right hook but walked into a left-right combination. Williams kept coming and tried an uppercut but took a right that knocked his head sideways again.
Williams seemed concerned with the way round one had gone, but trainer George Peterson urged him to keep calm and wait for Cintron to attack. Midway into the round, Williams finally caught Cintron with a straight left on the chin, but the crowd was already booing the lack of action – something formerly unthinkable at a Williams fight. Cintron ducked the next left and made Williams pay with a left-right combination. Williams missed another left and took a right on the head, losing a vapid round.
Between rounds, Cintron’s trainer Ronnie Shields pointed out to his fighter that Williams wasn’t rushing him for a reason. Even they expected Williams to be more aggressive and were more than pleased with the way the fight was proceeding.
Cintron was again leading for the first half of round three, and the crowd again voiced their disapproval of Williams’ atypical caution, which wasn’t far removed from Mosley’s unwillingness to engage Mayweather the previous week. But though he was winning, Cintron wasn’t doing much himself and certainly not imposing his will on the taller Williams.
With less than twenty seconds remaining in the third, they traded body shots. Williams then stepped in and drilled Cintron with a straight left hand to the face against the ropes. Sensing an opportunity, Paul pursued Cintron until the bell, likely taking his first round of the fight with his short-lived assault.
As slow as the bout had unfolded, it was over in a flash in round four. Williams marched in with a straight left hand to the chin but ate a harder left hook from Cintron. Paul reached out and caught Cintron with another straight left against the ropes, followed by another big one. Just as fast, Kermit blasted back with a crushing right hand that slammed Williams’ head straight back. Williams’ momentarily lost his footing as he stepped awkwardly, and the fans roared with cheers that a fight had finally broken out.
Williams ducked a left hook but caught a right on the side of the head, though he appeared to have recovered from the big right hand. Cintron tried to throw down another right, but Williams ducked and grabbed him around the waist as Kermit grabbed him around the head. Paul tried to throw a right hook but lost his footing in the clinch and fell past Cintron, crashing onto the canvas.
The momentum saw Cintron spiral around, tripping over Williams’ ankle and losing his balance before spilling right through the ropes and over the ring apron and a ringside table. Cintron instantly clutched at the back of his head, and, with security rushing forward to break his fall, rolled off the table to the floor just as Williams was getting to a knee and watching the chaos unfold.
Williams stood and looked over the ropes, but referee Dr. Lou Moret calmly pulled him away. Surrounded by ringside security and the doctor, Cintron remained on his side on the floor, holding his ankle. Kermit seemed to gesture to his lower back before going back to reaching for the ankle, though the doctor seemed to be examining his right shoulder. After a few minutes, a stretcher was brought out, a sign that Cintron would not be climbing back into the ring to finish the fight.
With fans booing, Cintron remained on the floor but was moving his legs. Williams watched from the ring, wrapped in a towel to keep warm and wearing a saddened look on his face, as if he was aware of the opportunity he had wasted.
In a strange twist, Moret proceeded around the ring, collecting the judges’ scorecards. In the state of California, it turned out, the result of a situation like this was not a no contest; instead, after three rounds had been completed, the bout went to a technical decision. That fact had to have Williams worried, considering Cintron had landed the far more telling blows throughout the fight and also seemed to bag the partial round four after rocking Williams’ head with the right.
A neck brace was fastened around the head of Cintron, and he was rolled onto the stretcher, still moving his arms and legs. He was also talking, arguing with the paramedics about something, whether it was that he thought he could continue or that he wanted to hear the scorecards read before being taken out.
As he was wheeled out of the arena, Cintron was still within range of hearing Michael Buffer announce a 40-36 scorecard in his favor, overruled by scores of 40-36 and 39-37 for Williams, who won the bout on a split technical decision. Williams gave a halfhearted salute to the fans while Cintron covered his face with his gloves on the gurney. In an act of frustration, he pounded the side of the ambulance before being put in.
Cintron had a right to be angry. The fight was tentative and therefore close, but, if either man had deserved to be ahead after four rounds, it was Cintron. His punches did more visible damage, and, when neither was landing power shots, Cintron was outboxing Williams.
To add insult to injury, Cintron wasn’t even in the discussion when Williams was asked about the future. Paul said he wanted the top dog in the sport – Mayweather – first and foremost, followed by Manny Pacquiao and possibly a rematch with Sergio Martinez, who Williams narrowly defeated in his previous fight. Since then, Martinez captured the middleweight championship from Kelly Pavlik, and Pavlik, no longer able to make 160 pounds, is not invoking his rematch clause.
Williams was anything but impressive, and, without a fan base to bring to the table, he isn’t getting Mayweather or Pacquiao in the ring any time soon. It’s safe to say his slow start and irrational strategy against a man known to fade under pressure squandered any chance he had of drawing a big name into the ring in his next fight. Williams is no better off now than he was a week ago and, short of a rematch with Martinez, might be forced to rematch Cintron and make it clear who the better fighter is just to make a fight of any interest whatsoever.
