PAUL WILLIAMS W tech dec 4 KERMIT CINTRON

I’m still struggling to make sense of what happened in Saturday’s main event on HBO when Kermit Cintron dived through the ropes against Paul Williams in as weird a finish as any that have been seen in a boxing ring.

Cintron says that he wanted to continue but that the commission doctors decided he should be taken to hospital for observation. Only Cintron knows how badly he was hurt when he went out of the ring in the fourth round and landed on a table, thence on to the arena floor. He gave the appearance of being in considerable distress. It didn’t look to me as if he was pleading to continue fighting.

The irony of it all is that Cintron had fought well and for me he was level with Williams, 38-38, with the partially completed fourth scored as a complete round as the rules require.

Some, of course, will say that Cintron was looking to get out of the fight, perhaps feeling that he could escape with a no decision. However, two of the three judges went with Williams, 40-36 and 39-37, while the third judge saw Cintron ahead, 40-36.Here is where things get even more puzzling. 

Under the unified rules, if a fight has to be stopped due to a boxer being injured by an unintentional foul, the bout goes to the scorecards after four rounds. This scheduled 12-round non-title junior middleweight bout was under California rules, where there is a three-round cutoff.

Yet Cintron was not injured by an unintentional foul.Under any rules, surely — California or unified — if a fighter injures himself and cannot continue, he loses by TKO.

If a fighter slips and breaks his ankle, or if he misses with a wild punch and dislocates his shoulder and can’t continue, the other man wins by TKO, right? This is how it has been all through boxing history, surely? Am I missing something here?

Cintron fell out of the ring — or, more accurately, seemed to propel himself out of the ring. It was all very unfortunate, to be sure, but, to me, the correct verdict should have been a TKO win for Williams, as hollow as it would have been.

For those who wager on fights, these things are important. It appears to me that players who wagered on Williams winning by decision or technical decision garnered a fortunate win, those who bet on Williams by KO, TKO or DQ took an unlucky loss.

When Bernard Hopkins fell out of the ring against Robert Allen in Las Vegas and hurt his ankle — also in the fourth round — the fight was ruled a no decision, true. However, the fighters had been in a clinch and it seemed that Hopkins lost his balance when referee Mills Lane prised them apart. The then Nevada boxing commission chief, Marc Ratner, told me in a phone conversation  on Sunday that the extenuating circumstances were taken into account in rendering the no decision verdict. Unfortunately there are not too many Marc Ratners running boxing commissions these days.

Had Williams shoved Cintron through the ropes, then, yes, a case could be made for a no decision. Cintron clearly lost his balance after the fighters became tangled in a clinch, with Williams going to the canvas. Yet instead of reaching for the ropes to steady himself, it was as if Cintron took flight. It was a very strange state of affairs. The end came when the fight in the Los Angeles suburbs was just heating up nicely. Little happened in the first three rounds but Cintron was jabbing well, and he was right in the fight, although Williams seemed to be taking over towards the end of the third. 

The fourth was exciting while it lasted, with Williams landing the left hand from his southpaw stance and Cintron coming back with a solid right hand. Then, in almost the next moment, the fight was over.

I did think that Cintron was starting to look uncomfortable under pressure in the fourth, but then he landed his best punch of the fight and Williams’s legs seemed to buckle a little. It seemed to me that Williams was a bit too tentative initially. He had the “can’t get going” look of the first fight with Carlos Quintana. The chess-match type of fight displeased the customers. 

By the third, though, Williams was beginning to get into his rhythm. I think he was probably on his way to breaking Cintron down. Cintron has shown emotional instability in the past, which has been well-documented. Were we seeing a sudden Cintron meltdown? All we can do is guess.