By Rick Reeno

Ask and you shall receive. Paul “The Punisher” Williams finally got his wish. On October 3, he makes his return to the middleweight division to challenge the number one fighter at the weight, WBC/WBO champion Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik. The Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City will play host, and HBO will televise the action.

BoxingScene.com received a call from a very happy George Peterson, the manager/trainer of Williams. Pavlik is going to be the biggest, and strongest, fighter that Williams has ever faced in the ring. Peterson told BoxingScene that several options were on the table but they viewed Pavlik, despite the physical advantages, as the easiest fight on their list.

“You are right. He never fought anyone that big. He’s the smaller man, no doubt about that. But, that doesn’t frighten us because we know what we are doing. We are going to make that height and weight advantage work against him. He’s just a basic fighter. You don’t have to prepare for anything specific to fight him,” Peterson said.

“We had a few choices to fight but we chose to fight this guy because he was the easiest guy for us. The guy is a robot. The guy is programmed. He is going to come out and do the same thing, nothing different. He is like Frankenstein; he will take those steps and punch and take those steps and punch. This fight is long overdue.”

People are expecting fireworks in this fight and fireworks they will get. The strategy for Williams, according to Peterson, is to stand his ground and take the fight directly to Pavlik. Peterson has a theory that Pavlik is one of those punchers who can dish it out, but can’t withstand the return fire.

“He won’t have to find us because Paul will step right to him and rock him. His chin is made in china. Paul will stand right in front of this joker and bang him right out. We are fighting a ghost that you can see. We thought a ghost was invisible but we have one here that we can see and we are going to spank that butt. They call him “The Ghost” but what do you do when you have a problem with a ghost - you call Ghostbusters,” Peterson said.

“Pavlik is taller, bigger and punches harder but he has to find something to punch. When will he have time to punch when 125 punches are coming at him in every round? All of those guys who can punch, they can’t take it. You have to be able to pitch and catch. We want to see how good he can catch. How well can he catch? How good is his chin? I know he can pitch but can he catch? Paul is going to test that chin.”

A very hard training camp begins today. Peterson doesn’t see the weight playing a role in the fight. Williams is coming off a dominating performance over Winky Wright, at middleweight. Peterson expects the same kind of performance on October 3.

“Rick, it’s going to be a war like you said. Ill tell you one thing, we are going to spank that butt. We are going to start training today and Paul can’t wait. I haven’t seen him this excited in eleven years. Like Ghostbusters, we ain’t afraid of no ghost,” Peterson said.