Paul Williams needs Emanuel Steward

[marbleheadmaui]

He wasn't born into the Kronk environment, he grew up in North Carolina. The fighters who've gone to Kronk & done well with the style were all excellent amateurs and/or very intelligent fighters. Williams is neither. He's an exceptional athlete, but not an intelligent fighter. The complete lack of head movement is shocking. If you boxed at an amateur gym, you'd identify the guys who are really intelligent fighters & adapt well. Now, often these guys will achieve well, but not always. Sometimes there are raw athletic talents, who are very predictable, but whose athleticism & fortitude allows them to beat more technically astute opponents.

I'd also argue that this Williams just doesn't deal with southpaws thing well is a real red herring. Of his last ten fights, only two have been against orthodox fighters. In fact, he has an extremely high number of southpaw opponents for any fighter. What this tells me about his match-making is that those who see him regularly don't want him in with orthodox guys. I can definitely see this, not only from the Cintron & end of the Margarito fights, but also in how he attacks. He opens right up & would be a real sucker for a right hand down the middle imo.

That really leaves no excuse for not having a clue about avoiding that left and is an extraordinary indictment of his trainer.

Definitely. I've long thought that George Peterson is a blow-hard of the highest order. It's fine to talk some shit, if you've really taught some fighters the ropes in the way guys like Kevin Cunningham or the Mayweathers have. But Peterson seems to just encourage Williams to keep trying to out-throw his opponent & just trots out stock phrases like 'take his left hand away' without advising how to actually do it.

It was one of the real shocks for me when I went over to the US recently & sparred. I went over with this idea in my head of damn near every fighter being a mini-Mayweather or Hopkins. Instead all the guys I sparred were strong, but remarkably stupid in the ring. Just charging forward over-eager to stand & trade. I'm really not some fantastic boxer & regularly get busted up in the gym, yet I felt like Ray Leonard. Now there's obviously gyms still creating excellent talents (there was another that looked to have some great guys that I wanted to go to in DC, but then I looked at the murder rate in that area ), but I suspect this gym was symptomatic of many & probably the kind of gym that Peterson ran.

There has been a real distinction between the US and Brit teaching styles that goes back at least 100 years. In various books I've read men like Dempsey, Ross, Wilde, Buchanan all talk about it. Back foot vs front foot, left hand emphasis vs power punching emphasis etc. It's pretty interesting

I think your experience with the US guys is symptomatic of the decline in teaching in the USA though. I mean go back 25-30 years in the US and look at the rankings.

The US had guys known for their banging like Leonard and Hearns and Curry and Hagler and Mike Spinks. But every one of those guys were complete boxers as well. Today? We have guys like Bradley and BHOP and Ward, who are complete fighters but cannot punch, or guys like Rios or Ortiz or Berto, who can punch but aren't remotely complete fighters.

[JazMerkin]

He wasn't born into the Kronk environment, he grew up in North Carolina. The fighters who've gone to Kronk & done well with the style were all excellent amateurs and/or very intelligent fighters. Williams is neither. He's an exceptional athlete, but not an intelligent fighter. The complete lack of head movement is shocking. If you boxed at an amateur gym, you'd identify the guys who are really intelligent fighters & adapt well. Now, often these guys will achieve well, but not always. Sometimes there are raw athletic talents, who are very predictable, but whose athleticism & fortitude allows them to beat more technically astute opponents.

I'd also argue that this Williams just doesn't deal with southpaws thing well is a real red herring. Of his last ten fights, only two have been against orthodox fighters. In fact, he has an extremely high number of southpaw opponents for any fighter. What this tells me about his match-making is that those who see him regularly don't want him in with orthodox guys. I can definitely see this, not only from the Cintron & end of the Margarito fights, but also in how he attacks. He opens right up & would be a real sucker for a right hand down the middle imo.

That really leaves no excuse for not having a clue about avoiding that left and is an extraordinary indictment of his trainer.

Definitely. I've long thought that George Peterson is a blow-hard of the highest order. It's fine to talk some shit, if you've really taught some fighters the ropes in the way guys like Kevin Cunningham or the Mayweathers have. But Peterson seems to just encourage Williams to keep trying to out-throw his opponent & just trots out stock phrases like 'take his left hand away' without advising how to actually do it.

It was one of the real shocks for me when I went over to the US recently & sparred. I went over with this idea in my head of damn near every fighter being a mini-Mayweather or Hopkins. Instead all the guys I sparred were strong, but remarkably stupid in the ring. Just charging forward over-eager to stand & trade. I'm really not some fantastic boxer & regularly get busted up in the gym, yet I felt like Ray Leonard. Now there's obviously gyms still creating excellent talents (there was another that looked to have some great guys that I wanted to go to in DC, but then I looked at the murder rate in that area ), but I suspect this gym was symptomatic of many & probably the kind of gym that Peterson ran.

There has been a real distinction between the US and Brit teaching styles that goes back at least 100 years. In various books I've read men like Dempsey, Ross, Wilde, Buchanan all talk about it. Back foot vs front foot, left hand emphasis vs power punching emphasis etc. It's pretty interesting

I think your experience with the US guys is symptomatic of the decline in teaching in the USA though. I mean go back 25-30 years in the US and look at the rankings.

The US had guys known for their banging like Leonard and Hearns and Curry and Hagler and Mike Spinks. But every one of those guys were complete boxers as well. Today? We have guys like Bradley and BHOP and Ward, who are complete fighters but cannot punch, or guys like Rios or Ortiz or Berto, who can punch but aren't remotely complete fighters.

I agree with all of that with the exception of punching. I think Hopkins was a pretty good puncher at Middleweight, but I don't think he really carried the snap up with him & his drop in speed & work-rate has seen his power fall away. But, yeah I do agree on the standard of US teaching. I will hold that I didn't go to the best gyms in the city because I wasn't so desperate for quality sparring that I was willing to get shot or robbed

I also box at one of the better clubs in London, where there is a deeper pool than elsewhere, so maybe I'm just comparing an apple with a mouldy orange. But it really did shock me how unrefined these guys were. They didn't work behind the jab so much as flick it out as a distraction as they tried to line up the big back hand or lead hook. I definitely think it's a decline. There's probably a strong argument that there's been a decline over here as well, but probably nowhere near as huge.

I mean going back further, I remember when I first watched footage of Jake LaMotta. I was watching a lot of Cotto fights at the time, a man who was considered a combo of power & technical skill. I expected to see the LaMotta I'd heard described, a messy brawler. Instead I saw a guy doing all the things that I so admired watching Cotto for, using a clever jab & nice head movement to get inside. I think maybe too many guys watched Raging Bull or Rocky & thought that is how you actually box

[marbleheadmaui]

I agree with all of that with the exception of punching. I think Hopkins was a pretty good puncher at Middleweight, but I don't think he really carried the snap up with him & his drop in speed & work-rate has seen his power fall away. But, yeah I do agree on the standard of US teaching. I will hold that I didn't go to the best gyms in the city because I wasn't so desperate for quality sparring that I was willing to get shot or robbed

I also box at one of the better clubs in London, where there is a deeper pool than elsewhere, so maybe I'm just comparing an apple with a mouldy orange. But it really did shock me how unrefined these guys were. They didn't work behind the jab so much as flick it out as a distraction as they tried to line up the big back hand or lead hook. I definitely think it's a decline. There's probably a strong argument that there's been a decline over here as well, but probably nowhere near as huge.

I mean going back further, I remember when I first watched footage of Jake LaMotta. I was watching a lot of Cotto fights at the time, a man who was considered a combo of power & technical skill. I expected to see the LaMotta I'd heard described, a messy brawler. Instead I saw a guy doing all the things that I so admired watching Cotto for, using a clever jab & nice head movement to get inside. I think maybe too many guys watched Raging Bull or Rocky & thought that is how you actually box

Yup. You watch footage of men with reputations as hard men or unskilled brawlers like LaMotta or Tony Zale or Carmen Basilio and you realize they really knew what they were doing. But you have to be an educated fan to know what you're watching.

I don't know that ten year old kids bring preconceptions with them to a boxing gym that last very long. In my expereince they are pretty malleable, at least initially. It's the teaching and the teachers.

[Nameless]

In Canada,

It seems to take all another road and be totally the opposite; never has been boxing so popular, there are a couple of gyms that opened, all another landscape than it was only 15 years ago. Many people are now interested into that sport, not only the casual specialist and I think that we never had as much potential as we do have now. I am not saying that Canada is the next big powerhouse in boxing but when you look all the galas that are sold our that we do organize in Montreal, it's amazing, now Toronto seems to take the same tendency if I refer to a conversation I had with youngblood about it. Hopefully it can spread to the other provinces as well.
As for the US, I am pretty sure it is just a matter of cycle, such a big country with large ressources can't stay "down" eternally.

[johnsebastianmiran]

I think that Williams needs an eye exam. He has a height advantage and don't blame the other fighters for hitting him often, it's his fault for not standing tall and throwing the jab. His fights could be at least fifty percent easier if he didn't fight like a guy six inches smaller than him. One step and those long legs take him across the ring but he started to believe all those complimentary articles about him. If you want to win, never think you have arrived because there is traffic behind you and sooner or later when you start losing your edge, you've got to get into the slow lane.