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Winky Wright-Paul Williams battle of left-handers apparently will take place
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Winky Wright vs. Paul Williams might be the best battle of left-handers ever. In any sport.
Now rising to No. 4 on my 2009 wish list is a match-up of those two. And it so happens that it’s in the offing. Promoter Dan Goossen, who handles Williams, told me “we’re close” to making that fight happen, perhaps March 14 on HBO with Williams’ WBO junior middleweight title at stake.
There are Bay Area ramifications. Although Goossen didn’t say whether Gilroy’s Robert Guerrero, whom he formerly promoted, might show up on that card or the one Jan. 24 featuring Antonio Margarito vs. Shane Mosley, San Leandro’s Nonito Donaire is expected to challenge WBO super-flyweight champion Fernando Montiel on March 14 in the Philippines (where it will be March 15).
Williams has been the scariest welterweight since Thomas Hearns was unbeaten. At 6-foot-2, Williams is the tallest elite welterweight ever and one of the division’s most memorable lefties. He can box, move, defend himself and hit hard. Understandably, given both his height and 82-inch reach, and therefore the reluctance of elite 147-pounders to fight him (he’s the last man to beat Margarito), he moved up to 154 in 2008 and could become a fixture atop the 160-pounders.
Winky Wright knows how it feels to be avoided for many of the reasons Williams is shunned. Wright, 37, is a boxer, not a puncher, which diminishes his marketability, but he has long been one of the slickest boxers around. He was too big for Mosley in beating him twice, and he fought valiantly (and successfully, for my money) in his 2006 draw with the larger Jermain Taylor. Continuing to campaign against larger men, Wright lost a fairly lopsided decision at 170 to Bernard Hopkins, who is nearly as tall as Williams, in 2007. Wright hasn’t fought since.
You always wonder how elite left-handers -- Manny Pacquiao, for example -- would look without that advantage, and since Williams’ only loss, since avenged, came against southpaw Carlos Quintana, Wright-Williams would be one of the most intriguing fights of the year.
BEST AND WORST: In January, Margarito-Mosley is definitely the headliner, with Mosley perhaps better equipped to outlast Margarito than was Miguel Cotto, who lost to Margarito in 2008 but edged Mosley in 2007. Don’t count on Mosley, 37, winning, though. There aren’t any really awful matches on the schedule, but I’m designating the Yuriorkis Gamboa vs. Roger Gonzalez bout the worst. The match-up of the former Cuban Olympian (12-0, 10 knockouts) against Gonzalez (27-2) looks good on paper, but Gonzalez is coming off an eighth-round TKO loss to Cornelius Lock (17-3) and hasn’t fought anyone else even that distinguished since his other loss, in 2004, to then-up-and-coming Jhonny (not Johnny) Gonzalez. Gamboa-Roger Gonzalez would be an acceptable main event for this Jan. 9 ESPN card if it weren’t for the bogus title at stake: the NABO featherweight belt.
As for December, Pacquiao vs. Oscar De La Hoya wasn’t competitive enough to rate as the fight of the year, but Pacquiao’s performance made it the best fight of the month. If the wild cruiserweight bout in which reckless IBF champion Steve Cunningham couldn’t hold off Polish plodder Tomasz Adamek was more to your liking, your boxing aesthetics need work. As for the worst, the questionable decision lifting James Toney over Fres Oquendo in their heavyweight farce was merely a distasteful appetizer for the WBA heavyweight title bout in which listless 7-footer Nikolay Valuev was awarded an unjustified decision victory over 46-year-old challenger Evander Holyfield.
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