Sitting ringside at last night’s Brandon Rios-Urbano Antillon scrap in Carson, California, I obviously missed most of the developments taking place with Paul Williams’ return bout miles away against Cuban Erislandy Lara in Atlantic City. Despite trying to pick the fight up via a live stream I was too enthralled with Rios’ bloody 3rd round TKO over his rival from Maywood and decided to instead check the results as soon as they came in.
I was a bit shocked to find out that despite coming away with a majority decision, that Williams had actually eaten a lot of left hands in the fight and most felt that Lara was blatantly robbed. This was surprising to me because I had likened the Williams-Lara fight to another one of Paul’s previous conquests, an April 2009 whitewashing of Winky Wright at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas in which he was too active and mobile, and didn’t think the southpaw from Cuba would be able to find a rhythm.
<--- Slideshow: Paul Williams bloodied in Atlantic City; bonus shots of the weigh in and victories by Jhonny Gonzalez and Rico Ramos
Williams of course was attempting to recover from his brutal knockout loss to Sergio Martinez last November, a fight that saw him drilled cold via a left-hand from the slick Argentinean, and who knows what his mental state was coming into his bout with Lara. All I can do is speculate for now until I see a replay of the fight myself but it looks like the 29-year old Williams, who mentioned the word retirement leading up to the fight, may have a hard road ahead.
For images of the bloody Williams-Lara bout please visit the slideshow on the left. Also included you will find Rico Ramos’ come-from-behind knockout over WBA super bantamweight champion Akifumi Shimoda and WBC featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez’s stoppage of Tomas Villa. Ramos trained out of the Mayweather Boxing Club and other gyms in Las Vegas, Nevada for his shot at Shimoda…
Chris Robinson is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. He can be reached at Trimond@aol.com
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