Paul Williams vs Verno Phillips: Fight Result
Co-Feature: Chris Arreola vs Travis Walker
Nov 29, 2008
Leading up to the junior middleweight fight, Williams, 27, promised to dig his feet in and throw punches that would get Phillips' respect. Respect he got, but he had to earn it from the 39-year-old (today) veteran. The bout started with Phillips bouncing in, out, and around, looking for counter opportunities, and often finding them.
The Phillips fight plan, likely derived from wearing out film of Williams' loss to Carlos Quintana, worked well in the first two rounds. Too bad for Phillips it wasn't a two round fight.
The Punisher's pressure wore heavily on Phillips as the night slipped by. Williams gloves sunk repeatedly into the older man's side and leather rained on his head. Round after round. Relentlessly.
"The third round was the turning point. I felt Verno's legs leave him."
Phillips' legs did, indeed, leave him in the third round, or thereabouts. Reduced to stumbling around, trying to land a clean, fight-changing shot amidst the Williams barrage, Phillips showed as much courage as any fighter could be expected to. His corner stopped the fight after round eight. As they should have.
"Paul Williams gets all my respect," said Phillips in the post fight press conference. "In 20 years that was the first time I'd ever been stopped on my stool."
A difficult admission from a proud fighter.
Williams' great distress of the night came from an accidental headbutt in the first round. The gash bled freely from the moment the butt occurred until the fight was stopped. It's unclear what his corner was using to treat the cut, but it looked for all the world like they were putting blood on it.
"It was difficult to fight with it (the cut). It was the first time I had to fight with one, but I handled it right."
In the heavyweight co-feature, Chris "The Nightmare" Arreola, of Riverside, CA, which is just 25 minutes from the Citizens Business Bank Arena, had the partisan crowd thinking they were in a bad dream of their own in the first round of his fight with Travis Walker. Walker began the contest in near perfect form as he jabbed Arreola back to the ropes and unleashed combination after combination.
Round one clearly went to Walker and round two started in his favor when he dropped Arreola to a knee with a straight right hand. Arreola beat the count and survived the inevitable assault as Walker tried to finish the job. Instead, the Houston, Texan depleted his oxygen reserves and Arreola took advantage of Walker's increasingly lazy punches.
The Inland Empire's newest star dropped Walker twice in the second, prompting some of the press at ringside to proclaim round two, with it's three knockdowns, as round of the year before the timekeeper's bell even stopped vibrating.
Clearly hurt, Walker was an easy target in round three. Arreola stalked him, rocked him, then finished him with a seismic left hook.
After the fight, Suite 101 asked promoter, Dan Goosen how he felt about having to rising stars who are not just getting better with each ring foray, but are good in front of the microphone and camera to boot.
"I don't think about that, I'm just glad to be associated with these rising stars. I just do my job promoting and let them put a smile on my face."
 |
 |
 |
 |
