PAUL WILLIAMS vs VERNO PHILLIPS

After two one-round KO wins in a row, Paul Williams is once again living up to the “most avoided man in boxing” tag that his promoter Dan Goossen has bestowed on him. On Saturday the towering welterweight champion boxes at junior middle in a 12-rounder against Verno Phillips, the capable and courageous veteran who shocked Cory Spinks in March.

Williams, 27, unaccountably slumped to defeat in February when losing to Carlos Quintana. It was a result that should never have happened. All I can think of is that Williams suffered an emotional letdown after his big win over Antonio Margarito, took Quintana lightly and paid the price. When I talked with him on the phone prior to the rematch he said that he just couldn’t seem to get going in the first fight, that nothing was clicking into place. He said he would show his real form in the return bout. I doubted him and actually picked Quintana because I thought the Puerto Rican might have the slick, southpaw style that would always give Williams trouble. I was, of course, completely wrong there: Williams just smashed right through a shell-shocked Quintana in two minutes, 15 seconds.

Since then, Williams has had another stunning one-round win, blitzing the overmatched middleweight Andy Kolle in 97 seconds.

One thing that will not happen on Saturday is another first-round win for Williams. Phillips is far too crafty and seasoned to allow that to happen to him. In fact I see a long night ahead for Williams.

Although Phillips turns 39 on the day of the contest he is a very well-conditioned fighter who trains at high altitude in Denver. He is not an easy fighter to hit cleanly due to his excellent use of the ring and his quick, unexpected moves. Phillips will circle away from an opponent, then dart in with hard hooks and right hands and either crowd the other fighter or spin around him. They call it fighting in spurts, and Phillips does it better than most. He certainly did it well enough to get the spilt decision win over Spinks in his opponent’s home town of St. Louis.

That decision is considered controversial, probably because of the one-sided scoring of veteran commentator Bob Sheridan on the Don King website’s live coverage. Sheridan had Spinks winning 11 rounds and informed viewers: “This was a clinic in boxing by Cory Spinks to my way of thinking.”

This, to me, was a close fight. On first viewing I thought that Phillips won at least four rounds and could have won two others. When I got he tape I sat down and watched it very carefully and it looked an even fight, six rounds apiece. Give one more round to Phillips, which it was possible to do, and you could easily have him ahead by 115-113.

Spinks’s body language showed that he was struggling. After 10 rounds his trainer, Buddy Shaw, told Spinks: “You need these last two rounds" and before the start of the 12th he urged him to “dig deep ... let it all hang out”.

So, it wasn’t a confident corner with the fight entering the final stages.

Actually, Spinks swept the last two rounds on the scorecards but, again, they were closely contested rounds.

It did surprise me that Phillips got the verdict in such a close fight, bearing in mind that he was meeting Spinks in St. Louis, where the hometown boxer had been a narrowly scored winner against Roman Karmazin. However, Phillips was the man going forward at the end. When Spinks raised a glove at the final bell, the St. Louis crowd booed — the fans certainly didn’t see him as the winner.

So, despite the so-called controversy over this decision I think that Phillips deserves a lot of credit for a gritty, well-fought, upset win.

On Saturday, though, Phillips is in a difficult place. He was able to back up and even bully Spinks. In Williams, however, Phillips meets a fighter who should be very strong at 154 pounds — this actually could be Williams’s optimum fighting weight.

I think that Williams will have learned a lesson from the loss to Quintana. I just cannot imagine him being as lacklustre and lacking in focus ever again.

On Saturday I am expecting Williams to come out and put fast pressure on Phillips, throwing lots of punches from out of his southpaw style, trying to get in telling blows to the older man’s body in an attempt to slow him down.

Phillips can hit hard with the hooks and right hands, and I think it is quite likely that he will be able to bob under punches and come up with some solid shots that might steady Williams. I will be surprised, though, if Phillips can land the sort of blows that will have a lasting effect. He might be able to check Williams here and there, but I do not think he will be able to stop him in his tracks.

Experienced as Phillips is, he has never met anyone like the 6ft 1in Williams, who can be a veritable punching machine and who will tower over him by some five inches — and we saw what happened in last weekend’s Caballero-Molitor fight when a much bigger man comes out to impose his strength and will from the start against a skilled but smaller man.

There is no way that Phillips will melt down in four rounds in the manner of Molitor against Caballero, but I do think that he will be feeling the pace by the middle stages.

When Phillips fought Kassim Ouma in Las Vegas four years ago he was very tired late in the fight and looked on the verge of being stopped. As I recall, the referee and doctor visited his corner after the 11th round, but Phillips was allowed to come out for the final round and somehow back-pedalled to the finish line — and two judges had this a very close fight.

This was against a full-of-energy, peak-form Ouma, and Phillips showed he has the heart and savvy to survive when things look bad — and he has always shown a good chin, with just one stoppage loss on his record, way back in 1988. He is, though, four years older than he was on that gruelling night in Las Vegas, and on Saturday he is facing a fighter who is bigger and surely harder hitting than Ouma.

I expect Phillips to be competitive in the first half of the fight but I believe that Williams is going to wear him down and catch up with him in the latter stages of the fight. I can see referee Jon Schorle rescuing a weary and overwhelmed Phillips in the 10th or 11th round.