Credit: Dan Rafael (ESPN.com)
WBO welterweight champ Paul "The Punisher" Williams will, indeed, be defending his title in February against Carlos Quintana, but pretty much everything else about the HBO broadcast has changed.
Initially, it was supposed to be Williams unifying alphabet titles with Kermit Cintron, but Cintron can't even train until March. It was also supposed to be a three-fight card from St. Lucia on World Championship Boxing, with heavyweight prospect Chris Arreola taking on veteran Monte Barrett, and super middleweight blue chipper Andre Ward in action. Plus, it was going to be on February 2.
Instead, it'll be Williams-Quintana headlining a two-fight Boxing After Dark card somewhere in the States on February 9. And the undercard fight will feature HBO's favorite prospect, welterweight slugger Andre Berto.
The date move is because HBO had nothing for the 9th after Diaz-Katsidis fell through, and networks that run boxing like to go up against other boxing so that we can only watch one card. Bob Arum is putting together another action-styled PPV event that night.
As for Ward and Arreola-Barrett, BoxRec.com still has those fights listed for St. Lucia on the second of February, but we'll see.
In other news, Anthony Mundine will "defend" his super middleweight "title" on February 27 in Sydney, against long-time friend Nader Hamdan. This doesn't mean that a rematch between Mundine and current 175-pound titlist Danny Green is off, necessarily. Mundine is just doing an old pal a solid, more or less.