By Mark Vester
A few months ago, WBO welterweight champion Paul Williams was close to a deal where he would have moved up by two weight divisions to challenge WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik. The two sides negotiated for weeks, but were never able to reach an agreement. Pavlik would instead sign a deal to fight Bernard Hopkins at the catch-weight of 170-pounds. Williams would still make a move to 160-pounds in September, knocking out Andy Kolle in one round.
The September move to 160 was not entirely about the weight, he wanted to prove a point that he was serious about fighting Pavlik or anyone else at middleweight. Williams was one of the many who watched last weekend’s masterful performance by Hopkins, who took Pavlik to school for twelve-rounds to win a lopsided decision.
Williams spoke with BoxingScene.com’s Ernest Gabion, and said that he is still very eager to get Pavlik in the ring. He would have used the same game plan as Hopkins, but says the damage would have come quicker and his movement in the ring would have been slicker.
"Basically Bernard took our game plan. That's what we would've done to him, except we would have done it much faster and much slicker. We are more slicker and younger than Bernard. That's not to take nothing from him. He put on a perfect show like we would've did,” Williams said.
Although Pavlik took a bad loss, Williams tells BoxingScene that he still wants his titles.
"He's still a champion. He's still a 160 champion. Of course I would do it. If they want to do it, I would love to do it with him for the 160-pound belts," Williams said.
The next fight will come against IBF junior middleweight champion Verno Phillips on November 29. Williams still plans to return to 147 to defend his WBO title. In a strange twist, Phillips’ IBF title is not on the line. The IBF would not sanction the fight because Williams was not ranked by their organization. The WBO sanctioned the fight for their interim-title at 154.
"I don't know what that was [with the IBF]. I guess people don't want me to get all the belts. Actually we were going go back to 147 for this fight, but we couldn't find anybody to fight. The mandatory turned it down. So we thought, why go back down to 147 to defend out title if nobody wants to fight for it, so we'll go to 154 and fight for their title. These guys at 147 want to take the soft way out,“ Williams said,
“I respect Verno Phillips for making this fight with me. He proved he's a champion. He proved he has heart. All these other guys, they talk smack on the internet. To me they only fight on the internet. They talk about what they are going to do, and when we go to them and ask them about it - they turn chicken.”
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