JOSE LUIS HERRERA TKO5 AARON WILLIAMS

Another one bites the dust, with cruiserweight Aaron Williams joining Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Andy Lee, Mike Oliver, James McGirt Jr. and Eric Fields as unbeaten fighters who have been unexpectedly stopped this year.

Williams was a big favourite, with analyst Teddy Atlas informing Friday Night Fights viewers at the outset that he would be surprised if Williams’s scheduled 10-rounder with Colombian Jose Luis Herrera turned out to be competitive.

In the first round it looked as if Atlas was going to be proved correct as Herrera went down under a two-handed onslaught. Yet four rounds later it was Williams who was hurt, unable to recover and out of the fight.

The fight showed that when a boxer coasts along rather than taking care of business, unpleasant things can happen.

After almost stopping Herrera in the first round, Williams surprisingly stood back and jabbed, allowing his opponent to get himself together after the rocky beginning. By the fourth, Herrera was beginning to fancy his chances and the Colombian’s heavy right hands were starting to look distinctly threatening. Williams dodged most of them, but with his almost nonchalant hands-low, lean-to-the-side style there was always a risk that he would get caught if Herrera kept throwing.

Herrera did indeed keep throwing and, in the fifth round, Williams got caught.

Fighters such as Lafarell Bunting and Tavoris Cloud stayed on top of Herrera after they hurt him and didn’t give the Colombian a chance to recover.

Maybe Williams had felt Herrera’s power when the Colombian hit back at him, and perhaps this was why he took a play-it-safe approach when his best strategy, surely, was to go right to Herrera and try to nail him again once the second round started. That might have been a little risky, but by staying on the outside and sticking out an occasional jab, with his chin all too available, Williams was giving his opponent a great chance to gather some momentum and land something of significance. Herrera was given the opportunity to get lucky — and he grabbed it.

Williams was a bit unfortunate not to have won in the first round, though. Herrera, on unsteady legs after being dropped, was able to buy precious seconds by grabbing Williams and sort of tackling him to the canvas. Then, astonishingly, the ring doctor got up onto the ring apron and commanded referee Charlie Dwyer to bring Herrera over to the ropes for an inspection. By the time the doctor had finished shining his pen light into Herrera’s pupils and having a good, long look at him some 12 to 15 seconds had elapsed, and Herrera had recovered sufficiently to get through the rest of the round.

Without being tackled to the canvas and without the interruption caused by the doctor’s intervention, I believe there is a very good chance that Williams would have got a one-round win. Then we would have been talking about him in glowing terms. As it is, he will now be considered a flawed fighter who does not take a punch terribly well. He was exposed.

This business in Rhode Island of the doctor being allowed to get up on the ring apron and interrupt a fight is something that I do not like at all. The doctor did it in the first round, and he did it again in the fifth when Williams was in trouble — on the second occasion he advised the referee to stop the fight, of course.

If doctors are permitted to intrude, the outcome of fights are going to be affected. A boxer who has his opponent in difficulties will lose his advantage because he will have to start all over again.

OK, if a doctor is given authority to stop a fight, then by all means let him signal to the referee: “That’s enough!” However, for a doctor to call for a time out while he carries out a lengthy examination is something quite different.

So far, I believe that Rhode Island is the only commission that gives a doctor such sweeping authority — and I hope it remains the only one.