That card lived up to expectations as the best HBO card of the year (non PPV). Am I forgetting something, or was the Gomez knockout of Gatti the first upset on HBO's airwaves all year? Technically, Williams over Marg was an upset as well.
I had it the same as Lederman, 8-4 (116-112) for Williams. I can't say I'm enamored of his style, with lots of flicking, slapping punches, never sitting down on a shot and going for a knockout when at welterweight, he clearly has the power to do so. But I have to give him all the credit in the world. He fought exactly the same fight that he always fights and it was the perfect fight against Maragarito.
I honestly don't see any of the top welters beating Williams right now. He just has too much size and too high a work rate. As long as he can make the weight, I see him cleaning up the division. I'm not counting Mayweather as one of the top welterweights for these purposes, because I cannot imagine him agreeing to fight Williams in a million years.
When Williams moves up to middleweight and above, as he will inevitably have to, I think he's in trouble. He relies totally on his relentless punching as his defense and he gets hit rather easily.
As for Margarito, I think he's got to rebuild his career pretty much from scratch. He had trouble getting big fights before and he never had a very big fan base, for whatever reason. At this point, I wouldn't be shocked to see his next fight on ESPN, unless he can somehow force Williams into a rematch. Which could happen -- I'll bet that Williams is going to have a hard time getting other welterweights to fight him now. I wouldn't be surprsised if his only options turn out to be fighting Margarito again or moving up in weight.
Back in AC, in all the well-deserved misty eyes over Gatti's retirement (and here's hoping that he stays retired for real), a pretty darn impressive performance by Alfonso Gomez kind of got lost. Sure, this wasn't the same Arturo Gatti, but Gomez did everything right in there and I was VERY impressed by the precision of his punching. I'm not Gomez is world title material. But I think that there will be a number of significant fights out there for him. I would love to see him fight Chavez Jr.
Cintron-Williams would be a very good fight, though again, I think that Williams work rate would be just too much for Cintron to overcome. On the other side, Cintron is probably the biggest puncher on the welterweight scene, except maybe for Andre Berto who's still three or four fights away from stepping up to fight a belt holder. Cintron's also a much straighter puncher than Margarito ever was. So he might give Williams' "offense as defense" style a real test.
I am definitely excited to see all of tonight's winners in action again soon.
EDIT: After reading Arum's post-fight comments and thinking about this some more, I have to reconsider what I said about Marg's immediate future. Especially because, rather surprisingly, so many people saw a much closer fight than I did. Several respected boxing writers even had Margarito winning, which I can't understand at all. Still, the perception is that this was a really close fight.
I think his next fight will be a big one. He may get the Cotto fight after all. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd predict that it will happen later this year -- unless Mosely steps up and takes a fight with Cotto. In which case, I think we'll Marg-Cintron II, which should be very interesting. Cintron obviously would have a lot to prove in that fight. And of course, there's the equally strong possibility of Marg-PWill II. I think we'll be seeing one of those fights before the year is out, or early next year at the latest.