
Originally Posted by
El Gamo
Well,I had it 115-113 Williams but Margarito gave away the first 5 rounds. At least 4 press row scorers had the fight for Margarito. Williams camp does not want a rematch with Tony,not at the moment anyway and they don't want to fight Kermit as I've posted on many occasions so I guess PW just wants to stay out of the loop.
As to your second point,Margarito is known for being a slow started but this time,he was too slow and on top of that,he changed his game plan so rather than throw as many punches as PW did(which Margarito is fuly capable of),his team decided it would be better for him to pick and choose his sopts,counter and he did that well but only in the second half of the fight.
I'd certainly choose Margarito to win the rematch based on his showing when he did step it up and the fact that his punches were far harder throughout the fight,punctuated by the 11 the round. That by FAR and away the biggest round either fighter had.
If he starts earlier and applies more pressure,combined with his somewhat surprisingly good defence in the fight,he can win. His defence was very very good in the first half of the fight,he blocked ALOT of punhces,I mean PW's connect % was pretty low considering he was fighting a stationary target.
On your first paragraph: I thought Williams won the first 6 rounds fairly handedly. I think some gave Tony the 5th, but to me that was just a result of the crowd starting to get into it because that was the first round Tony landed anything of substance, but Williams still out worked him and controlled that round. As I said, Williams' camp doesn't want a rematch because there is little to gain at this point. It is not a big money fight right now, and beating him a second time is not going to help him much as far as getting a bigger fight. Why his camp won't fight Cintron at this point, I'm not sure. There is a lot to gain. The winner would be a unified champ, thus making them more attractive to the bigger names. It may be because the risk/reward does not balance out right now from a money perspective. It probably is not a big money fight yet, and so the payoff is not is probably not worth the risk (in their view) at this point. Honestly, I think Cintron is the one guy in the division with the best shot to beat Williams. He a big guy and throws hard, straight punches. He's really the only guy I could see knocking out Williams. To me, that is the only way to get Williams at 147. I can't see him losing a decision to anyone with his work rate and stamina. He took Margarito's best shots in the 11th and never buckled or stopped throwing punches, so I really don't think Tony can knock him out. It would take a cuts stoppage or something along those lines, IMHO.
Second paragraph: Tony ALWAYS starts slow. I don't seee how he will avoid that in a second bout. To me, what started to turn the tide a bit in the second half was not a better strategy from Margarito, but rather Williams started to get a little bit tired (he has remarkable stamina, but with that kind of work rate some level of fatigue is unavoidable). That gave Tony a few extra openings. I think as long as Williams is fresh Margarito will have trouble getting offeffective shots.
Third paragraph: I disagree his shots were far harder. The crowd going crazy put aside, Williams was not close to being stopped in that 11th as his legs never really buckled and he never stopped throwing punches. The were solid, stinging shots, but he throws them too wide to get maximum power. You could see Margarito was gassed from the effort in the 11th and Williams took the final round easily. I also don't buy that Williams' punches didn't bother Margarito a great deal. Like I said, if that were the case Margarito would have just walked threw the blows and taken him out.
Fourth paragraph: I don't give Margarito much credit for defense for this reason: Williams' offense isn't designed to land a high percentage of blows. Even against lesser foes he normally only lands around 30% of his shots. The point of his offense is to dictate the pace of the fight and to wear down the opponents via both the accumulation of the blows and the effort needed to fend off the blows. This is the reason I say Williams won fairly handedly. He had the higher work rate, dictated the action of the fight (remember, Margarito is normally a high volume puncher himself...he only got off 571 shots in the fight), landed more punches, landed more power shots, won in terms of ring generalship fairly clearly. Tony landed only a slightly better percentage than Williams (they were both under 30%). He may have landed the harder blows, but there simply weren't enough of them landed except in that 11th round. Anyway, just my view. That isn't to say a rematch might not be in order down the line, but in order to make it worth Williams' while Margarito needs to get at least one impressive win under his belt (a win over Cintron might do the trick, especially since it would give Williams the chance to unify belts).
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