Congratulations to El Indio

For anyone possibly interested in boxing (lets hope there's at least someone I don't bore with my endless rants of professoinal fisticuffs), there is a new WBO welterweight champion. Carlos Quintana comes from a tiny ass town in Puerto Rico and has only one loss to fellow countryman Miguel Cotto. If you saw that fight, you can defintely see why he quit on his stool. After two hellacious knockdowns he was able to survive the round only to realize that further insisting on his cojones could prove hazardous to his health, so he said screw it and quit on his stool. With that cleared up, Max Kellerman (still not sure if I love him or hate him) said something the other day that rang quite true, Quintana is the truth gauger in regards to his opponent. Against a heavily touted prospect named Joel Julio, Quintana outclassed him. I saw the fight, just plain old outclassed him. Then comes this last Saturday, a match against Paul Williams, the then WBO champion who had scored said title belt against the highly regarded talents of Antonio Margarito.

For those of you who don't know why I thought Williams was going to pitch a shut out, here are some fact you should know. The welterweight limit is 147 pounds at the time of weigh in. Williams made the weight then ascended in one day to the gentle weight of 164 pounds. That's 17 pounds of hydration if you needed some help with that math because it is astounding he can even stand up. Then comes another tiny detail, this is a division where the average height is around 5'8".... Williams is 6'1". To add to that, Williams has a reach two inches longer than Muhammed Ali. As if that weren't enough, on a good night, Williams averages 100 punches or more per round and seemingly doesn't know the meaning of getting tired. So naturally, I would have bet on this guy especially after having seen him beat Antonio Margarito and having seen Carlos Quintana quit on his stool against Cotto. Quintana though had other plans and outhussled, outboxed and did everything in his impressive playbook to make Williams look closer to the real joke than the real thing. So here's to Carlos Quintana, another Puerto Rican saying loud and proud that he's not someone you should overlook, even if you're 4 inches taller than him.

Cheers