A new star was born at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California as Paul "The Punisher" Williams (33-0, 24 KOs) of Augusta, GA won a unanimous decision over Antonio Margarito (34-5, 24 KOs) from Tijuana, Mexico to win the WBO welterweight title.
The fight was a back and forth battle of big punches and big wills. Williams may be one of the most active fighters in the sport. He threw 1256 punches over the twelve round contest against the man that both Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Shane Mosley turned down to fight.
Margarito had a lot of trouble with Williams' height of 6'2 (some say 6'1), his reach of 83 inches and his southpaw style. To make matters worse, Williams was throwing over 100 punches per round, giving Margarito few occasions to jump in with his own counters.
The first half of the fight was dominated by Williams' higher punch output. Not all of the punches were landing, but he was throwing so many that any official judge would find it very hard not to give him the rounds. Margarito did plenty of damage with his bodyshots, making Williams double over at times from the force of the blows.
Williams also used a lot of movement to circle Margarito with his jab and fire off that jab with quick combinations. When he began to slow down, he stood his ground and went toe to toe with tough Mexican hitter, sometimes getting the better of the exchanges.
The defining moment of the fight came in the eleventh round. Margarito sensing that he needed to close the show big, began blistering Williams with a high volume of power punches to the head and body, opening a big cut above the left eye of Williams in the process. Williams showed that he was for real by hanging on and weathering a storm that would broken down a lot of other men.
Unknown to the combatants, the fight was on the table in the final round. Williams came out in the twelfth like he was the man who needed it more. He was began to once again circle around and pepper Margarito with a jab that was followed by quick combinations to steal the round from the charging champion.
The final scores were 116-112, 115-113 and 115-113.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
This kind of fight is good for boxing and will help keep it alive. Champions should not fight tomato cans and should take on the top challengers. Williams seems to be destined for great things at the moment. I hope that he can keep up this winning streak.
Post a Comment