By Paul Strauss: Kolle promised he wasn’t going into the fight with the mindset of simply being an opponent. He was going into the fight to win. I’m sure “Kaos” Kolle believed that, but the Punisher certainly didn’t.
Williams is an unbelievable specimen. He was huge at welterweight, and still dwarfs most middleweights. If you don’t believe he has an incredible reach, just compare his reach with that of “large” heavyweight Chris Arreola, who fought earlier on the same card. Williams dangles arms that stretched out to 82 inches. Arreola’s reach is 77 inches! Poor Kolle’s reach is a short 70 inches.
Kolle’s pre-fight plan naively included a hope of backing up Williams, and wearing him down, but how can you realistically do that if you’re at waltz time, with short arms, and the other guy is somewhere in the neighborhood of break-neck (yours) speed with a reach that exceeds Muhummad Ali’s!
To make matters worse, Kolle just didn’t have the experience. His record of 17-1 just doesn’t include anyone close to the caliber of Williams’ opponents. . Kolle’s only real step up was against Andre Ward, who stopped him. He also suffered a flash knock down in his fight against Matt Vanda, who is neither fast, nor a big puncher. Williams fought more, against much better competition, including a big win or Antonio Margarito. He also scored a first round revenge knockout of Carlos Quintana.
There just wasn’t anyway Kolle was going to make it into the later rounds, let alone score an upset. Not that it made much difference, but he also came into the ring looking less than fully warmed up, and to make matters worse, he shed his robe before he needed. Williams looked warmed to the task, and kept his robe on until the last minute. It was just another telling note of experience.
Before the fight ended abruptly at 1:37 seconds of the first round, Kolle did land a couple of punches, but they had no effect on Williams. On the other hand, Williams landed several hard punches, and quickly put Kolle on his heals. The end came with a double right hook, first to the body, then to the head. Kolle never saw the one to the head. Williams finished things off with a long left hook to the head as Kolle was already on his way down.
Where does Williams go from here? He says he’s headed back to 147lbs in November, which to look at him seems impossible. Before his career ends, he expects to fight at 154lbs., 160lbs, and possibly even 168lbs.
Chris Arreola made relatively short work of Israel Carlos Garcia, probably hoping he could still get something to eat tonight. He probably was feeling a little puny at a mere 258lbs. He happily said he was following Paul Williams lead, and moving up in weight. His pudgy, paunchy, portly physique would make him a “Nightmare” only if you were the owner of a restaurant offering an “all you can eat buffet”! Garcia was less like his nickname of “King Kong” and more like “Can’t Stand Long”. Arreola put the pressure on, and kept it up, until the referee called a halt to the slaughter at 1:11 of the third.
More brief, but exciting action was provided by Rico Dashon Ramos, when he utterly destroyed veteran Manuel Sarabia at 1:31 seconds of the first round. In the post-fight interview, Ramos said he moved cautiously at first to see what Sarabia had, and when, “I saw that he didn’t have anything” then Ramos unloaded. It did Sarabia absolutely no good to try and hold Ramos’ head down with his left glove, because Ramos proceeded to fire multiple lefts to his body with blinding speed. Sarabia crumbled back toward the ropes in the hope he would get a respite. None came, as Ramos closed and continued the assault until the fight was stopped. To say that Ramos is fast, or even very fast is an understatement. He is extremely fast, and punches hard. Fans will hear more about him in short order, as he is proving to be eager and active.
Another quick end came at the hands of the:”Mongolian Mongoose”, Bryan Jargal. He fought Francisco Rios Gil, using an interesting low left hand style, employing a lot of head slipping and close-in action. The first round showed Jargal testing the waters a bit, but when he figured out, Gil was a light puncher, he stepped up the action in the second, loading up considerably over the first round. He landed punishing left hooks to the body, and before long he had Gil in deep trouble and looking for air, but all he found was canvas, and the fight was over at 1:16 seconds of the second round.
All in all a good night for exciting finishes. As Mr T uttered in character as Clubber Lang, “I pitty the fool” who gets matched up with Paul Williams at any weight.