Paul Williams isn’t playing dodge ball, although a lot of potential business partners do seem to duck, dodge and scatter in search of a lesser threat when confronted by hands as dangerous as any wrecking ball at any weight between 147 and 168 pounds.
But the dodge game is won by steps over, around and always away from harm’s way. It’s an elusive dance. Avoid, avoid, avoid, no matter who the aggressor is. It’s tough to win that one. Tough to sell too.
That’s why promoter Dan Goossen is quick to counter with a subtle distinction whenever anybody reaches into the cliché bucket and pulls out the one about being the most avoided.
“With Paul, they don’t avoid him,” Goossen said in response to fellow promoter Lou DiBella during a conference call for the Williams-Sergio Martinez fight Saturday night in Atlantic City. “They fear him.’’
Fear sells. From Sonny Liston to Mike Tyson, it’s a proven commodity. Nobody knows quite what to make of being avoided, which turns into being forgotten if allowed to linger too long. Some have been able to make a career out of the label, a title all its own. Winky Wright did it.
But Goossen argues Wright’s slick, make-you-miss style fits the role. With tactical elusiveness, Wright made it work. Goossen says Williams (37-1, 27 KOs) can’t, maybe by instinct accented with style defined by punching power delivered at a sprinter’s pace. Hide-and-seek is a trap for anybody who doesn’t know how to set one.
“There is a big difference between being avoided and being feared,’’ Goossen said.
It is as different as waiting and pursuing.
In the pursuit, there is better chance at generating demand from an impatient public for the kind of fights that kept Wright in the waiting room for so many years. Yet, that pursuit also includes risk, which is often heightened by the unpredictability inherent in a rush to attack. In part, Martinez (44-1-2, 24 KOs), an Argentina native living in Madrid, personifies the uncertainty. He will be in the corner opposite only because Kelly Pavlik won’t be.
Pavlik was supposed to be there, first on Oct. 3 and then on Saturday, but withdrew both times because of a staph infection on his left hand. Then, Pavlik, the World Boxing Council’s middleweight champion, scheduled a fight for Dec. 19 against Miguel Espino in Youngstown, Ohio, his hometown.
That move resulted in inevitable speculation and turned the likeable Pavlik into an easy target for anybody armed with a cell phone, a computer, rumors, insults and no accountability. It turns out that Pavlik’s infection was resistant to antibiotics. By the time that was discovered by a specialist in Cleveland, his life was in danger. The infection is gone. The rumors live on.
Pavlik’s mistake was in not acknowledging the severity of the infection. If he had told managers, promoters and physicians what was wrong, the fight might never have been announced. Now, however, the damage in the public’s perception of Pavlik, will be there until or perhaps if – he ever fights Williams. The guess here is that he will. But the Williams camp is predictably skeptical.
According to Goossen, there was never any word from the Pavlik camp that he would withdraw from Dec. 5 bout. By then, however, Goossen said he was already planning for that possibility. The first withdrawal served as a warning.
“We certainly prepared ourselves for another cancellation,’’ Goossen said. “We wouldn’t play with a serious thing such as a staph infection. On the other hand, we also heard some stories that — come hell or high water — we didn’t think he was going to be in that ring come December 5th.’’
In turning to Martinez, Williams stays in the news with another chance to embellish Goossen’s new advertising label for him: “The most feared man in boxing.”
The intriguing twist is that sometimes that substitute is some the wild card that springs the upset. Martinez? Who knows? His lone loss is to Antonio Margarito, who in 2000 stopped him in the seventh. Williams beat Margarito, taking a unanimous decision in 2007. Yet, Williams also has one loss in 2008 to Carlos Quintana, a lefthander. Martinez, who predicted he will knock out Williams, is also left-handed.
No problem, says Williams, who seems to say everything in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I don’t think it is difficult fighting a left-hander,’’ said Williams, who went on to beat Quintana in a rematch later in 2008. “It doesn’t matter if he is a right-hander or a left-hander. I just deal with the fighter in front of me.’’
No fear there.
Photo by Claudia Bocanegra