Prediction: The last time we saw Cory Spinks was in June when he suffered an emphatic TKO defeat at the hands of Cornelius Bundrage. Most of us figured that would be the last we’d see of Spinks, but here he is again with another main TV slot, this time for ESPN Friday Night Fights, where he faces Carlos Molina. King Carlos is trying to claw his way back to the top of the 154 pound division after being robbed of a potential victory against James Kirkland last year. He’s vowed to show the knockout power that’s been missing from his resume and put a definitive end to Spinks’s career. While knocking out a 34 year old, clearly past prime version of Cory Spinks isn’t exactly a big achievement, looking bad or losing to him is an unquestionable career-derailment.
The Spinks of 2005 would have been able to use his legs to outbox a guy like Molina and evade the inside mauling tactics. The 2013 version will have a hard time keeping Molina off him. Look for Molina, who won’t fear anything coming back at him, to walk down Spinks, abuse him against the ropes, and end matters by the sixth round.
The card airs tomorrow night (February 1) at 9 p.m. ET.
Last night, Showtime Sports debuted the first of two All Access episodes going behind the scenes of the upcoming junior middleweight title match between Miguel Cotto and WBA titlist Austin Trout. This episode is revealing in that it shows Cotto is “losing his passion” for boxing. With his children growing up, we see Cotto’s mind moving onto the importance of being a full-time father (“Live for my kids like I do for boxing…”). It’s a very good bet that 2013 may just be Cotto’s last year as a fighter. On the other side, we get to see Trout’s home and family life and it’s good to know that will be improving with this Cotto payday. The fight goes down at Madison Square Garden on December 1.
Alfonso Gomez and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez were recently in Los Angeles to announce their title match on the September 17 undercard of “Star Power: Mayweather vs. Ortiz.” The fight will be for Alavrez’s WBC junior middleweight belt.
Erislandy Lara and promoter Golden Boy are seeking an immediate rematch to avenge his highly controversial first loss to Paul Williams last Saturday (July 9) in Atlantic City.
After a competitive first half, Lara dominated the second portion of the fight and was viewed the overwhelming winner by HBO announcers, fans in attendance and gathered media. The three judges (Al Bennett, Hilton Whitaker III, Donald Givens), all of whom had no previous experience with major championship fights, awarded Williams a dubious decision via scores of 114-114, 115-114 and 116-114. The verdict was met with resounding boos from those in attendance.
“It was a good fight, but I don’t know what the judges saw,” said Lara. “I definitely want the rematch with Williams.”
Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer cited his fighter’s dominance in the area of “clean, effective punching,” the lead criteria judges are supposed to utilize when scoring rounds.
“When you see a young undefeated star convincingly win almost every round against one of the best fighters in the world and then have the judges take the fight away from him, it’s very disturbing, not only as his promoter, but also as a boxing fan,” Schaefer explained. “The CompuBox statistics alone indicate who the winner of this fight was…Lara landed 42% of his total punches to Williams 19%. Further indication come when examining the power punch statistics as landed Lara landed half of his power shots to almost one of every five that Williams landed.”
Following the verdict, Paul Williams and his promoter Dan Goossen attempted to justify the decisionon the account of Williams being the fighter coming forward and applying pressure. Schaefer advised that while a rematch is Lara’s main focus, they are ready to explore other top fights in the junior middleweight division should Williams reject a return bout.
“We hope that Williams and his promoter Dan Goossen will give Lara a much-deserved rematch to settle the controversy that has erupted since Saturday night’s decision,” said Schaefer. “If Williams chooses not to fight Lara again, Erislandy is ready to fight anyone, anywhere and at any time and we will make sure they he gets the opportunities he deserves in the wake of his spectacular performance in Atlantic City.”
Lara will be out of training 6-8 weeks to recover from a facial fracture suffered last Saturday. The injury was the result of an accidental clash of heads.
At press time, Paul Williams nor Dan Goossen could be reached for comment on a Lara rematch.
Top Rank CEO Bob Arum is close to inking a deal that will have Manny Pacquiao face Shane Mosley on May 7 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand.
Negotiations were not far enough along last Friday (December 17) to make an announcement, which Pacquiao’s team had planned to do in conjunction with the fighter’s 32nd birthday celebration in Manila.
In speaking with the Manila Bulletin, Arum said that he is closing out final particulars on the deal with Mosley advisor and Rap-A-Lot founder James Prince.
“We had a very good meeting,” Arum disclosed.
With Pacquiao’s side on board, Prince will review the contract with Mosley over the next few days before confirming the fight with media. Both sides are shooting to get the deal done before the holidays, and announce by December 23.
When Mosley was revealed as the frontrunner for Pacquiao, many fans and media members derided the bout as unacceptable for a pound for pound #1 fighter, citing Mosley’s age (39 years old), and last two performances against Floyd Mayweather and Sergio Mora.
Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach, who last year would only let a Mosley-Pacquiao fight happen if Mosley made a 143 pound catchweight, says the current version of Shane is still dangerous in the early rounds.
“I’m not counting him out…[Mosley is] very dangerous in the first four rounds,” Roach told the Manila Bulletin. “If people think this is going to be an easy fight for Manny, they’re crazy.”
Pacquiao last fought in November at a junior middleweight catchweight of 150 pounds, defeating Antonio Margarito to pick up the WBC title. Mosley’s last fight was in September, a draw with Sergio Mora at junior middleweight.
In addition to his WBC title at 154 pounds, Pacquiao also holds the WBO welterweight (147 pounds) belt. At press time, neither camp has verified any catchweights for this fight.
In 1989, a young “Terrible” Terry Norris was a fighter on the come up when he faced feared power puncher and WBA junior-middleweight champion Julian Jackson.
Six years younger than Jackson and much faster, many felt that Norris would have the decisive edge if he avoided brawling exchanges with Jackson.
In the first round Norris did just that, stinging the champion with sharp right hands and constant circling to avoid retaliation. Jackson couldn’t get set to punch, and was stunned early in the round by Norris’ fast combinations.
The success made Norris too confident, and he began to allow Jackson to close distance and eventually trap him against the ropes. Jackson landed a crushing right that rendered Norris unconscious on his feet, and added a left hook and another right that sent the challenger face first to the canvas.
Norris beat the count, but was gone and in no shape to continue, giving Julian Jackson a definitive 2nd round knockout.
Julian Jackson would move up to middleweight, and make several defenses of the WBC title before losing to Gerald McClellan. He would retire in 1998 with a record of 55-6, 49 KOs. Jackson is considered today one of the hardest punchers pound for pound in the history of the sport.
Norris would bounce back after scoring a career highlight win over a faded Sugar Ray Leonard and Donald Curry in 1991. He also won several titles at light-middleweight before retiring in 1998 with a record of 47-9, 31 KOs. Norris would also successfully sue Don King for a million dollar settlement over brain damage suffered during his boxing career.
In the my years covering boxing, I’ve never nor will I ever refer to any prizefighter as a coward. It’s a word that cannot come into my lexicon after seeing the physical and emotional pain they have to put themselves through. Another reason is the ever-present risk of permanent damage a fighter faces every time they step in the ring. One such example of this reality is former champion Wilfred Benitez.
Benitez was a boxing prodigy, turning pro at an amazing 14 years old and winning his first title at 17 against future Hall of Famer Antonio Cervantes. He would later face the best fighters of his era in Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Tommy Hearns. While renowned as a defensive wizard, Benitez began to slip and receive more and more punishment in his later years. Those bouts would lead to him being diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease named traumatic encephalopathy, prompted by the repeated head trauma he took as a boxer.
At 52, he is cared for today by his older sister Yvonne, and survives on a $250 per month pension from the WBC, and a $14,000 annual stipend from Puerto Rico’s government. The millions he made in the ring as a fighter, whether through bad spending habits or shady dealings, are long gone.
His condition was further profiled last week in an investigative piece by AOL Fanhouse, which further describes Benitez’s day-to-day condition.
Fighters can be many things: arrogant, opportunistic, funny, prideful, greedy, and numerous other colorful adjectives. But when you watch them from the comfort of your flat screen, or even from the stands of an event, remember that the same brain you use to understand your world, is being smashed around the inside of their skulls. Remember that win, lose or draw, long after you’ve moved on to critique the next fight, they often limp and grimace around their homes carrying battle scars for weeks, months, and even years. And in some cases, scars that never heal.
Other sports use deceptive language to paint their professions as life and death struggles or epic battles. We, as followers of boxing, don’t require such hyperbole. We need only to look at our faded warriors to verify the pound of flesh our sport requires of its men and women. And it’s a painful, sobering lesson that should never be downplayed or forgotten.
Top Rank CEO Bob Arum is taking a “wait and see” approach regarding if Paul “The Punisher” Williams will be a possible opponent for Manny Pacquiao next year.
Pacquiao is deep in training camp for his November 13 PPV fight against Antonio Margarito for the WBC junior middleweight championship. A win, and Pacquiao will have secured a major title in his seventh weight class.
If that happens, the next move would be to attempt a third negotiation for the Mayweather-Pacquiao superfight. But due to Mayweather’s recent legal problems with a domestic violence arrest, Arum has to prepare back-up opponents. On that list would have to be Top 10 pound for pound fighter and former welterweight titlist Paul Williams.
Arum is on record as stating Manny Pacquiao is the best fighter he’s ever promoted, listing him over previous legends like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard. But Arum believes Williams’ size would likely be too much for the 5’6, Filipino star.
One of the problems in a Paul Williams fight is it’s one thing to go up in weight and fight these big guys, but he’s 5’6 barely and he’d be fighting a guy that’s almost 6’3,” Arum told AOL Fanhouse. “Now that doesn’t sound like it’ll make a great fight but we’ll see.”
Williams’ last fight was in May at a 154 pounds, when he won a technical decision over Kermit Cintron. He sat out the majority of this year trying to secure a big name welterweight fight against Manny Pacquiao or Shane Mosley. Neither obliged, and Williams signed on for a middleweight rematch on November 20 against Sergio Martinez.
At press time, Paul Williams could not be reached for comment.
I’ll give Arum some props for at least being polite in his response. But let’s get real. Arum will match Pacquiao through his entire stable at 154 and 147 before he’ll even consider looking at a Paul Williams.
I would have loved to see Williams completing a modern today Fab Four by having a round robin with Mayweather, Mosley and Pacquiao. But unlike those guys, Williams has been unable to amass a fan following to create a demand for those type of matchups. Mayweather, for example, fought Mosley partly because the public would not have accepted any other matchup outside of Pacquiao. Williams, for all his weight-jumping between welterweight and middleweight, has yet to get himself in that position. It seemed that he was close to breaking through with a Mosley bout, but Sugar Shane’s trainer Naazim Richardson nixed the idea, claiming Williams is really a legit middleweight and too big for his fighter.
What can Paul Williams do? In my opinion, his future is at middleweight. His team should focus on trying to build him into the dominant middleweight champ that Jermain Taylor and Kelly Pavlik failed to be. Last month, Williams’ trainer George Peterson compared his charge to Marvin Hagler. That would be an excellent way to market the Punisher, as a hard-nosed, avoided fighter who took the hard way to the championship.
Finally, Williams’ team should take a page out of Bob Arum’s book. Antonio Margarito’s profile was raised considerably by how Arum painted him as the most avoided man in boxing. He cited Mayweather’s decision to turn down an $8 million dollar offer as the backbone for that opinion. The fans today are just as interested in the contract issues as the actual fights, so if Williams’s team started to expose these alleged contract offers, it would create a buzz around him.
The above ideas may not make Paul Williams a superstar, but it’ll at least make him a better known fighter. But before all of that, he needs to be 100% focused on taking care of business November 20 with Sergio Martinez. That fight stylistically will be the toughest of his career.
Today, boxing message boards and media have been buzzing about some recent problems that have arisen in the training camp of Manny Pacquiao. The Filipino superstar took the day off after contracting a slight virus. Before that, Pacquiao also had to take some time off to recover from a slight foot injury. Cause for alarm? Hardly. This only reveals that the Manny Pacquiao show is rolling along as usual.
Following his surprise TKO over Oscar De La Hoya in 2008, Pacquiao became one of the biggest names in boxing. With that name came the scrutiny of every single move he made. Every training camp becomes the same story. Manny doesn’t look good. He won’t listen to Freddie Roach. There’s too many distractions in the Philippines for him to train properly. And yet every time, Pacman still goes out there and dominates whoever’s been placed in front of him.
A good example was the hoopla going into his November 2009 fight with Miguel Cotto. In September of that year, Roach was blasting Pacquiao advisor Michael Koncz in the media over miscommunication on when training camp would begin. When Pacquiao did finally come to camp, that reports weren’t good. Roach threatend a few times to head back to the States because Pacquiao was entertaining too many disractions. Later, Pacquiao was having difficulty keeping up with sparring partner Shawn Porter, and was even dropped hard according to some gym reports. This led many to believe Pacquiao had ventured too high in going to welterweight, and would fall to Cotto in November.
Of course, Pacquiao ended up laying a prolonged beating on his Puerto Rican opponent before ending matters in the 12th round.
By now Freddie Roach knows his fighter very well. Things like Pacquiao missing a day or catching a slight cold are not huge causes for concern. In fact, Roach summed up his thoughts on Manny’s progress quite well earlier today on fightnews.com.
“We’ve had it before and the hardest part is keeping him in bed so he can recover a little quicker because he wants to work,” he explained. “He’ll make up for it. It’s really not a problem.”
October is a very slow month for boxing. Outside of V. Klitschko-Briggs and Bute-Brinkley, there are no high-profile fights on TV. That means expect to hear a lot more information, no matter how irrelevant, from Manny Pacquiao’s training camp for the next 5-6 weeks.
Paul Williams has a shot in November to become the recognized middleweight champion. But what the Punisher wants even more is a shot to become a superstar, something he believes the current pound for pound elite like Floyd Mayweather will never give him.
Although Williams is starting his media rounds for his anticipated rematch with Sergio Martinez, the South Carolina fighter is quick to point out the contest is the result of several shunned opportunities. His promoter has spent 2010 trying to entice a welterweight or junior middleweight showdown with Shane Mosley, Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather.
Mosley’s trainer Naazim Richardson has flatly stated Williams is a natural middleweight and much too big for his fighter. Pacquiao ignored Williams’ challenge and has signed on to face Antonio Margarito a week before the Punisher faces Martinez. That leaves Mayweather, who Williams’ camp believes is the most reluctant out of the trio.
“I don’t think Floyd Mayweather will fight me any time,” Williams told the Examiner’s Michael Marley. “Manny Pacquiao, he might do it, he might step up but not Floyd. I guess Floyd won’t fight me because I don’t have a vagina.”
Both Mayweather and Williams share Al Haymon as an adviser. Haymon was at the center of controversy this summer regarding the latest round of failed negotiations between Pacquiao and Mayweather. In addition, there’s speculation that Haymon-advised fighters have a secret pact not to face each other. Andre Berto, who Haymon also advises, seemed to confirm that earlier this year in an interview with Beats, Boxing and Mayhem.
I’ve heard about it, but me and Paul have the same team when it comes to the management end,” Berto said. “So they’re trying to keep us away from each other unless there is a lot of money in the pot to grab. Right now we are in separate lanes doing our things.”
Williams disagrees. He argues that at Floyd’s level, he calls his own shots and isn’t dictated to. He views Mayweather as a protected fighter who won’t take anything but a calculated risk, unlike his rival Manny Pacquiao.
“If Floyd went to Al and said, ‘Hey, I want to fight Paul Williams, what can Al do?’” Williams asked the Examiner. “But Floyd is not going to ever say that. Pacquiao, he fights bigger guys, he’s different from Mayweather so maybe I will get to fight him. Floyd ranks himself with Ray Robinson, with Joe Louis, all these guys..but all those great guys, they all lost sometime. Mayweather won’t take a hard fight, he won’t take the chance of losing.”
Paul Williams’ trainer/manager, George Peterson, is equally frustrated with his fighter’s inability to land a superfight. He compares him to a young Marvin Hagler, who toiled for years in obscurity before landing his first title shot against Vito Antuofermo. Peterson thinks the star fighters will ignore Williams until they are left with no choice but to face him.
“If Paul could fight about every few months, he would become a real monster in boxing. Then the fans would see how sensational he really can be,” Peterson said. “I think Paul, at this stage, is like Marvin Hagler was at one point. He is vicious, he strikes like a cobra but guys run away from fighting him like they did with Hagler.”
Williams vs. Martinez will take place on November 20.
“Paul Williams is one of the best fighters in the world pound for pound. Yet there’s no aura around him, he has no personality and the wrong kind of flash,” said Mora. “Paul Williams should be 10 times bigger than he is. It has nothing to do with his fighting. I don’t care, I like Paul. Me and him fought on the same cards and I love his people. But the mainstream doesn’t accept that.”
It’s a shame, but true. Some fighters are just able to draw fans to them. Williams is aggressive, has a leaky defense, and always goes for the knockout. Yet, attendance for his fights continue be low even with him facing top competition.
HBO has tried to put some promotional muscle behind him to no avail. In the commentary before his first fight with Carlos Quintana, Max Kellerman said Williams was dangerous and a possible next opponent for Mayweather. Even though the Punisher has won every bout since, outside of hardcore fans his reception continues to be lukewarm.
A superfight only happens when you have two stars. And right now, Paul Williams has yet to attain that star quality.
Still, Williams is on the right track. A win over Martinez and capturing the middleweight title does a lot to raise his profile. The division is barren, so afterward I see his big fight future at 154 pounds. Out of the beltholders in Dzinziruk, the Pacquiao-Margarito winner, Cotto and Cornelius Bundrage, he’s bound to get one of them in the ring.
What’s your opinion? Are Pacquiao and Mayweather ducking Williams, or does the Punisher need to put in more work to earn a shot?
