Looking higher than Cintron

Los Angeles Times

Paul Williams should be in a better place than this now, right?

“A 6-foot-3 guy who can fight at 147 pounds, a guy who can travel three weight divisions who’s never in a bad fight, left-handed, throws 100 punches a round and doesn’t take a step backward,” HBO’s vice president of sports programming and boxing coordinator Kery Davis says, reeling off Williams’ attributes without speaking falsely.

“There’s real potential for superstardom.”

Williams, 28, fought former world welterweight champion Kermit Cintron on Saturday night in a super-welterweight bout at Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.

Somewhere around 8,000 people — maybe less — were expected to attend and the bout, which was not completed in time for this edition, was televised by regular HBO, not pay-per-view.

Williams, who was supposed to fight Kelly Pavlik last year, entered the bout with a 38-1 record and 27 knockouts.

His promoter, Dan Goossen, took to calling this bout “The Weight is Over,” pressing the suggestion that Williams is willing to move back down to welterweight (where he hasn’t fought since June 2008) to take on Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao if their possible super-fight fails to get made again.

“We just want to make the statement that we’re a welterweight, and we’re here,” Goossen said. “We did that to enlarge the pool of opponents.

“If Floyd takes this fight, it’d do more at the gate and on pay-per-view than Mayweather-[Shane] Mosley did. Paul’s fresher than Mosley; he’s established himself; he’d make a real fight. If Pacquiao-Mayweather is not made, the focus has to go to Paul Williams.”