Liam Williams, the WBO’s No 1 middleweight contender, needed just 88 seconds to get rid of Andrew Robinson to retain his British title at the BT Studios in London.
It was a left hook to the body that sunk Robinson to the floor, where he was counted out by referee Marcus McDonnell, but Robinson looked both confused and annoyed after suffering a bad clash over his left eye from a clash of heads moments earlier, which sparked Williams’s desire to stop it early.
“I wanted it to go a bit further to get a couple of rounds, get my range and look good and let some shots go,” Williams said. “But, we clashed heads and I saw the blood dripping, I thought it was a bad cut, so I felt I needed to end this now before it goes to a technical draw. So I thought ‘let’s get him out of there and go home’.”
While the head clash was instantly ruled accidental by McDonnell, it had been Williams who had gone in head first to cause it. Up to that point, though, Williams looked the only winner. In the opening ten seconds he had landed a chopping right that stunned Robinson, who looked incapable of keeping the Welshman off him.
Williams pursued him around the ring and, after the head clash, he closed the show quickly, backing Robinson into a corner with to fierce right hooks, before landing a right, then a left to the body that sank him to his knees.
It has been ten months since Williams stopped Alantez Fox in similar devastating style in a final eliminator for the WBO middleweight title, but there is no sign yet of when Williams might get his shot at the champion, Demetrius Andrade.
“I’m mandatory challenger, so it is a case of when and where,” Williams said. “Give me the date, give me a place and I will be there. They need to start enforcing it now a little but more, I believe, and I am pushing for it because I want my opportunity and I want it next.
“I would have liked it to be this outing, but I am ticking over, I am staying in the gym and I am still learning. I’m only going to be better when the time does come.”
Williams, who also suffered a cut in the head clash, said he would be keen to make another defence of his British title if an Andrade fight was not forthcoming.
"As soon as the cut heals I am ready to go," he said. "I'd like it to be before Christmas but, realistically. is that going to happen? I doubt it. So, I am just going to stay ticking over, unless Frank (Warren) wants to give me another little run out before Christmas to win this title outright, because it is something I would like to do."
