Paul Williams must be a nightmare to fight. It’s not just the height, the reach and the southpaw style and the incredibly high punch output. All this would be bad enough.

There is more, though. He seems able to keep up the fast pace for 12 rounds without slowing. His movement makes him difficult to hit flush because he rolls and sways with the punches. Psychologically, he has a way of discouraging opponents because he seems to be enjoying himself. A little smile plays around his lips. This isn’t an attempt to mock the other man. Williams genuinely seems to be having fun when he’s in the ring.

All of this, of course, was far too much for the 37-year-old Winky Wright as Williams raced to a one-sided, unanimous decision win in their middleweight 12-rounder on Saturday night.

While a Williams win was predictable I had expected him to have a tougher fight. I mean, no one has dominated Wright quite like this, not even Bernard Hopkins. Although Hopkins bullied Wright in the later rounds, this had been a competitive fight for several rounds at least. The scores were a bit wide when Wright lost to the tough and much more experienced Julio Cesar Vazquez 14 years ago in France, but even then Winky was winning rounds, it was just that several knockdowns — including a couple of the off-balance type — cost him on the scorecards.

On Saturday, though, Williams was making Wright look like a slow, old fighter. Wright was durable and game, and he landed some solid shots in the all-southpaw fight. The trouble is, though, getting in, say, four or five clear, eye-catching hits during a round doesn’t mean a lot when the other man is throwing and landing so many more punches.

Williams was punching from all sorts of angles. There were uppercuts from both hands, straight punches through the middle, hooks and left hands around the side of Winky’s high guard.

You had to feel sorry for Wright. In his first bout in 21 months, this punching machine was simply the wrong type of fighter for him to be meeting. Winky just didn’t know where the punches were coming from, and although Williams isn’t a big hitter as such there is a cumulative effect to his punching, as shown by the increasingly battered and bruised look to the area around Wright’s eyes. The wide scores of 119-109, 119-109 again and 120-108 accurately reflected the way the fight played out. Wright won the fifth on one card, the sixth on another card, and that was it. As Larry Merchant observed in the HBO commentary, he wasn’t just being beaten, he was being beaten up.

There are some fascinating matches that can be made at junior middleweight or middleweight involving Williams (I agree with Emanuel Steward that he shouldn’t go down to welter again; Williams weighed in at 157 pounds for Saturday’s fight and while I am sure he can still make 147 pounds my concern is that he might sacrifice some strength in so doing).

Williams was meeting an older fighter on Saturday, true, and one who had been inactive, but I don’t think very many people would have expected him to shut out Winky in the scoring (in the consensus scoring, Williams won every round). This was a very impressive performance, and one that was entertaining to watch. I expected good things from Williams in this fight, but he exceeded my expectations.