HE SAYS… SHE SAYS

This Saturday WBO welterweight titlist Paul Williams, 33-0 (24), faces Carlos Quintana, 24-1 (19), at the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California. The good news for the 26 year old Williams is that he’ll finally get some work for the first time since snatching the title from Antonio Margarito seven months ago. The bad news is that he was originally scheduled to fight IBF title holder Kermit Cintron on February 2 in a unification bout that was cancelled due to ligament damage to Cintron’s right hand suffered in a tune-up bout.

The fight will be broadcast on HBO’s Boxing After Dark, beginning at 9:45 p.m. ET/PT. Quintana is a good fighter but he’s out of his league with Williams’ style and physical advantages, and therefore will likely be knocked out. So we respect him for having the courage to challenge Williams, but that will be the last substantive mention of him in this story.

The big story last week was that Cintron, 29-1 (27), will defend his title against Margarito, 35-5 (25), in a rematch of their 2005 bout in which Margarito stopped Cintron in five, the only loss of Kermit’s career.

So, for all of you drama lovers out there, you have the revenge factor to feast upon as the selling point of the matchup, a bonus in a far more compelling bout than the main event of Miguel Cotto and Alfonso Gomez (who?) bout for the WBA title. The winner of Margarito-Cintron will likely get a unification bout with Cotto in July, (or Gomez if Cotto has a seizure in the ring).

DAN GOOSSEN’S TAKE

But hey, not so fast with this revenge angle, Williams’ promoter Dan Goossen told us last week.

“Some writers are content to write the spin,” Goossen said. “It astounds me to see people look at Cintron and Margarito and say, ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’ It doesn’t tell the story of what our business is. Our business is about champions and what’s hurt us is we have more than one champion. Boxing is back because of matching the best together.

“What we have here is the man who lost to Paul Williams and the man who ran from Paul Williams are fighting each other and everyone’s saying, ‘Great, what a fight.’”

Goossen says that Cintron, promoted by Main Events, was signed for $1 million for the proposed fight with Williams. After the injury the Cintron camp advised him that they couldn’t be ready for that date, but could fight in March.

“Well, we didn’t want to go to March originally because Paul had been out since July 14,” the promoter continued. “But to make the fight we said we would wait until March.

“It became something of an ordeal to replace the fight. We offered Margarito tremendous sums of money [around $1 million] for a rematch. Remember Margarito’s biggest payday ever, and he had the title for seven years, was the fight with Williams. He made close to $ 2 million.

“We offered the rematch, which he said he wanted. He didn’t take it and we went to Zab Judah and didn’t get that fight. We wanted Cotto, Colazzo; you name it we went there.

“We went back to Cintron and extended the time period that he said he needed to get back in the ring to March 29. They came back and still said no. They said they couldn’t take a chance on the hand.

“So we sign Quintana to fight Paul and two weeks later there’s a press release from Cintron calling out every fighter but Paul. When all is said and done he takes a fight that’s on an undercard to another fight to fight for half the money, because two weeks ago we left an offer on the table for $ 1 million.

“The way I looked at it is you fight Paul Williams and you’re a unified champion, there’s two champions left standing, Cotto and Mayweather. If Cintron beat Williams in a unification you tell me how much it’s worth for Cintron and Cotto to fight. It quadruples.

“I’d rather be in our position. There’s a lot of obstacles to fighting our guy. I can see why they’re afraid or intimidated — he’s 6’3”, left handed, an 84” wing span, and throws punch after punch. I can understand it. But don’t go out there and say you’re a champion until you fight the tough ones, not until you’re willing to put it on the line.

“There’s no excuse except for the fear factor. Have you seen (Williams)? He’s a freak of nature. So just tell it like it is if you don’t want to fight him.”

Goossen said that not only last year before the Mosley-Cotto fight, but also recently he has spoken to Top Rank’s Bob Arum about a Cotto-Williams fight on PPV.

“I’ve got no problem with Cotto not fighting Williams,” Goossen said. “Just don’t sit there and say Mayweather’s avoiding you. My feeling is that by the end of the year we should have a unified title except for Mayweather so we can create the best champion for the pound for pound champion if he’s successful against De La Hoya.

“There’s something to be said about having a contract, a fighter gets injured, you give him an extension and he ends up fighting someone else two weeks later. If they said we like everything but the date, fine, let me go to work. But I haven’t seen many people leave $500,000 on the table to take a tough ass fight.

“Margarito is not an easy fight regardless. But to take half a million less, it’s a lot worse. Let’s face it, Margarito is probably going to be the favorite. If you’re going to take a tough fight and you’ve got a good prospect of losing, do it with a guy with another championship. Do it where you have a shot to upset him and the money would quadruple.

“For a long time Mike Tyson was the most feared man in boxing,” Goossen said in summary. “Opponents lost before they got in the ring. That’s the effect that Paul has on these fighters.

“Time is on our side. Paul is young.”

THE MAIN EVENTS RESPONSE

I asked Kathy Duva, the CEO of Main Events, if she wished to comment on the remarks of Dan Goossen of Goossen-Tudor. In short order, she prepared the following statement:

Mike,
I really hate to engage in these tit for tat exchanges, but Dan’s portrayal of this situation is spun in such a way that I can no longer simply ignore it.

1) When we were approached about rescheduling the Williams fight, (in December, about three weeks after Kermit’s hand injury occurred) we were given less than 20 hours to make a decision. Kermit asked if he could consult with his doctor first (he had an appointment scheduled about a week later) and we were told that this was not an option.

2) At that time, the dates that were given to me by HBO were “probably the second or third weekend in March.” At that point the network would not commit to any particular date. At no time did anyone suggest to me or to Kermit that the fight would definitely occur on March 29th. In fact, I have no recollection that March 29th was even discussed with me as a possibility. Obviously, there is a big difference between the second weekend in March (which is actually March 8th) and March 29th.

3) Based upon the fact that we were being pressured by Dan to make what I considered to be an ill-advised, hasty decision at a time when KERMIT’S HAND STILL HURT, I told Kermit that, in my opinion, if he wasn’t 100% sure he would be ready to fight on March 8th, the best course of action would be to give his hand the time it needed to heal and wait for another opportunity. The last thing either of us wanted was for Kermit to take the fight and then be forced to pull out due to a re-injured hand. At that point, Williams moved on to another opponent.

4) On January 21st we received a formal offer from Dan to do the Cintron-Williams fight “sometime between June and August” at a site that had yet to be determined. Despite the fact that Williams has a fight scheduled on HBO in February, which Williams would need to win in order for this hypothetical title unification match to occur, we were given a deadline of the end of business on Friday, January 25th, at which time the offer would be taken off the table. The terms included the provision that Kermit was not allowed to take an interim fight. For obvious reasons we were troubled about the possibility that the Williams fight might not occur until August, possibly in a hostile venue. When we asked Dan on January 25th for a definite date and site, he said that he was unable to provide them.

5) On or about January 24th, we were approached by Top Rank about the possibility of fighting Antonio Margarito in the middle of April in Kermit’s “home” venue of Atlantic City in front of Cotto’s largely Puerto Rican crowd with the winner to face Cotto in July. By then, by the way, more than a month had elapsed since Dan’s first offer to reschedule the Williams fight, Kermit had been to see his doctor, and his hand was feeling much better. I consider this fact to be quite relevant.

6) After considering both options on January 25th, our team (Kermit, Emmanuel Steward, John Hornewer, Pat English and me) decided together that the Top Rank offer was the better course to take. This business is all about risks. Kermit makes less money to fight Margarito than he does to fight Williams. So does Main Events. However, if Kermit wins, he gets a far more lucrative and significant match with Cotto (assuming that Cotto defeats Gomez on April 12th). All of this would occur during the same timetable that Dan presented to us for one fight with Williams.

7) In the end, defeating Margarito and Cotto would put Kermit in a better position than waiting until July or August to defeat Williams. The credibility that he would gain by avenging the only defeat of his career and then going on to defeat Cotto would greatly enhance Kermit’s status in the welterweight division and with Cotto’s massive Puerto Rican following. Defeating Williams in July or August would only put Kermit in line to fight the winner of Cotto-Margarito, who by then certainly would be miles ahead of him, and everyone else, as the next logical opponent for a mega-fight with DeLaHoya or Mayweather.

Finally, I would like to have a final word on the subject of Kermit’s injury. I don’t know if you have ever sprained your ankle really badly. I have. In fact, when it happened to me, the pain was on a level with that of childbirth—something that I have experienced personally, without any pain killers, three times. When I asked the doctor in the emergency room how my ankle could hurt so much when it wasn’t broken, he answered that I would have been better off if the bone had cracked, as extreme tendon and ligament damage can be worse. He explained to me that a really bad sprain is far more painful, and takes much longer to heal, than a break. Six months after my sprain, I still had pain in my ankle. I was told by my doctor and my physical therapist that this is quite normal. Two years later, I could still feel an ache when it was about to rain! A broken bone takes a relatively short and predictable period of time to heal. Bad sprains are not so easy to gauge.

Kermit sprained his right hand and wrist very badly early in his fight with Jesse Feliciano on November 23rd. Instead of favoring his injured hand or refusing to use it at all, he continued to throw his right hand with abandon, knocking his very tough opponent out in the 10th round. Imagine spraining your ankle and then pounding it into the ground over and over again for the next 30 minutes, because that is exactly what Kermit did with his injured hand. He kept landing his right—one of the most powerful right hands in boxing—over and over again until he finally beat Feliciano into submission. Then, when the fight was over and his adrenaline stopped pumping, Kermit reacted to the pain that had been building for the previous 30 minutes. Frankly, I think it was one of the most gutsy performances I have ever witnessed. It’s a shame that some people find it necessary to belittle Kermit for hanging in there and doing his job under difficult circumstances. I find his courage and heart quite admirable.

I suppose that in the event that Margarito were successful on April 12th, people would say that we made the wrong choice. On the other hand, avenging his sole loss to Margarito will put Kermit in position to checkmate Williams, which really is the object of this game. Our attorney, Pat English, once told me that in boxing we are always playing a three-dimensional game of chess. Come July, either Cintron, Cotto or Margarito will be in the position that I just described and Williams will have to find another way to advance on the board.

Dan’s protests ring pretty hollow right now. If he were a better chess player, he would have made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, thus ensuring that the Williams fight would go on. This he elected not to do. In fact, he chose to dictate terms to us in a manner that I found disrespectful to Kermit and of his position as the IBF World Welterweight Champion. I’ll grant you that this bothered me more than it did Kermit, and therefore we didn’t let it stand in the way of making our original deal with Dan for Feb. 2nd.

Kermit’s injury in November was certainly Kermit’s bad luck in that it caused his planned February 2nd fight with Williams to be canceled. Kermit and Main Events were very upset about this at the time for a number of reasons. Had the fight gone on as planned, we believe that Kermit would have won and his stock in the welterweight division would have risen. We also would have made some money this past weekend, which would have been very nice for both of us!

That an opportunity to bring Kermit to the far more lucrative Cotto match via an alternate route presented itself in the meantime, was Williams’ bad luck.

The good luck, however, belongs to all of boxing’s fans. The April 12th card is spectacular and there certainly will be fireworks in Atlantic City when the bell rings for the Cintron-Margarito rematch to begin! Thanks for your interest. I hope to see you there.

Kind regards,
Kathy

NOTES:

I’m curious as to what the readers think. Who made the best case? On Thursday, we’ll have more from Dan Goossen as he makes his case for Tony Thompson