Mandatory Eight Count: Paul Williams on April 10, Shane Mosley and something about cars

God it’s awesome

Sturm’s got a lot on his plate with Universum. Williams-Cintron probably makes more sense for HBO than Williams-Sturm since the price to make Williams-Cintron is likely the price to lowball Williams-Sturm

and probably won’t be able to box until that’s resolved.

Same goes for Dzinziruk, although Williams dropped his interim belt and is no longer Dzin’s mandatory anyway. Universum actually won its lawsuit with Dzinziruk, so that would be a legitimate possibility, if HBO was willing to pick it up. And unlike Sturm (who’s a huge name in Germany and would want big money), Dzinziruk isn’t really a name in Germany either, but he has a belt. I guess it’s a question of priorities. If Paul wants a non-interim belt at 154, that’s probably the way to go.

There’s nothing else available that’s huge money, but there are enough good fights out there that HBO would pay for. Some fights that potentially could be made:

Williams-Angulo (although I doubt Gary Shaw would want that)
Williams-Mora
Williams-Dzinziruk
Williams-Spinks
Williams-Lara (considering how Martinez and Quintana were able to pick Williams apart with counters, I think that Lara, who’s quicker and more precise than those two, would win pretty convincingly – probably the worst style matchup for Williams out there – and thus I think GBP may try to make this to break him out onto the world scene if he beats Brewer in a big way next weekend)

Williams-Duddy is probably off the table since Duddy is a Top Rank co-promote. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Arum tries to make Williams-Margarito II instead, to get Tony’s career back on track.

Goosen’s insistence on 50/50 for Pavlik-Williams is just asinine though. I can understand not wanting to take the exact same deal after Pavlik’s stock has gone down and Williams’ stock has gone up, but even with that, there’s NO WAY that Williams is an equal draw to Pavlik, and Pavlik would be able to freeze Williams out of the best fights if he wants to.

Williams-Citron? Nah…..not interested. How about Lucian Bute? Surely Williams can get up to 165 or so easily.

He could get up there but he’d probably suck and after seeing PW have trouble with Sergio at 160, I think Bute would decimate him at 168. All this talk of him fighting at 168 is probably five or six years ahead of its time, and the talk of him being able to make 147 anymore is probably just talk. He’s a 154/160 fighter.