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.