Paul Williams-Sergiy Dzinziruk talks starting for Dec. 5

With Paul Williams now having an open date and searching for an opponent on December 5, Sergiy Dzinziruk says he's ready, willing and able to take the challenge at 154 pounds. He'll be flying to the States to meet with promoters this week. BoxingScene.com interviewed Dzinziruk about the subject.

I’m interested in it, but the thing is I will fly to the USA on Wednesday, and only then we’ll meet the promoters and will start negotiating the conditions. But I can say that if we manage to agree upon everything and make this bout happen, I’ll be really glad.

Dzinziruk (36-0, 22 KO) recently split with his promoter, Universum, and addressed that topic as well. He figures they may want to work with him on the fight, and he seems more open to it than he did the last time he spoke about the company.

Maybe they want to take part in it, but I don’t want to have any business with them. As of now they haven’t contacted me or offered anything. If they do, I can think about it and analyze it. But actually I think that they will try to mess with this bout, do something nasty to undermine our negotiations, but we’ll be ready for that.

Dzinziruk is a fellow southpaw and a really disciplined boxer, and he's the real deal. He'd be no easy replacement opponent for Williams. Sergio Martinez is also in the running and also holds a title belt at 154 pounds. I thought there was a chance that promoter Lou DiBella would try to get Kermit Cintron into a fight with Williams, but DiBella appears set on keeping Cintron for a big Puerto Rican showdown against either Miguel Cotto or Daniel Santos, both of whom fight on November 14. DiBella also promotes Martinez and was involved with the original card, which was to co-feature his fighter, Carlos Quintana, against Top Rank's Joshua Clottey. Clottey was pulled from the card along with Kelly Pavlik.