By Mark Vester
On Saturday night, Carlos Quintana (25-1, 19KOs) defied the odds by outboxing the much larger Paul "The Punisher" Williams (33-1, 24KOs) to win the WBO welterweight title at the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, California. The scores were 115-113, 116-112 and 116-112.
Quintana is expected to receive a hero's welcome with hundreds of fans ready to greet him when he arrives back home to Puerto Rico.
Speaking with Endi, Quintana feels that he redeemed his career after being battered by Miguel Cotto over five-rounds in 2006.
"I am a great fighter. In the past, perhaps I didn't fight at my best, but I've recovered what I'd lost," Quintana said. "I said that I could fight with a larger boxer. I could have knocked him out, but I was focused on boxing. I showed that I'm a good boxer to everyone who didn't believe that I was."
"The big difference this time around is that I had my feet on the ground. At that time (against Cotto), all of the attention was great, but I lost my concentration. It was like the fight had passed, but it didn't. This time, I was relaxed and concentrated on the fight because I knew that I couldn't do anything stupid in the ring."
When the paper spoke with Williams, he offered very few excuses for the loss, other than Quintana taking him away from his gameplan.
"It wasn't my night. All I can is that (Quintana) took me out of my rhythm and I couldn't connect with punches to the body like I trained to do. He didn't do anything other than take me off my rhythm," Williams said.
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