Paul Williams: What’s a Knockout?
Williams lost a fight, not his talent. But both he and his trainer now know that “The Punisher” is as capable of being punished as he is of punishing…
When Sergio Martinez caught Paul “The Punisher” Williams with a textbook left hook that he never saw coming, it wasn’t only Williams who crashed to the canvas. All the hopes, dreams, and momentum that accumulated during the last 20 years of his life, from the first time he laced up gloves until that fateful day, hit the deck as well.
There are two schools of thought regarding KOs. One school says that a loss is a loss, it’s no big deal, especially since the knocked out fighter doesn’t remember what happened. The other school says that a knockout as devastating as the one Williams suffered never leaves a fighter. It’s all always there, stored in the furthest recesses of his brain. It can make a fighter gun-shy, make him play it safe. It can make a fighter do anything, including not fight to his full potential, to prevent something like it from ever happening again.
After a seven-month hiatus, Williams (39-2, 27 KOs) returns to the ring for the first time since his loss to Martinez when he takes on Erislandy Lara (15-0, 10 KOs) Saturday night at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, in a fight broadcast on HBO at 10:15 pm.
“I have never been in a comeback fight,” Williams said. “None of that talk would get under my skin. I never let anything like that worry me. To me it’s just another fight. Some of the top guys out there, like Manny Pacquiao, he lost a couple times. He didn’t have a comeback fight. He just comes back and fights. This is what we do. Guys that do have comeback fights, they are guys that don’t know themselves or what they are doing.”
It sounds like Williams is advocating for the school of thought that says knockouts are not a big deal. Presumably he learned his lesson and won’t let Lara, unlike Martinez, beat hit to the punch.
“He lost a fight,” said Williams’ trainer George Peterson. “He didn’t lose his talent.”
Williams didn’t lose his talent. But he may have lost his will to win. At the very least, both Williams and Peterson now know that “The Punisher” is as capable of being punished as he is of punishing. Lara may not be Sergio Martinez—who is?—but he’s an undefeated Cuban fighter, which is the same thing as saying he won’t be a pushover.
Can Paul Williams forget the past and just focus on Lara? Or will he be looking over his shoulder at the ghost of Sergio Martinez as he stalks around the same ring in the same building where Williams was starched last November?
