Your weekly random thoughts …
• You have to love the guts of
Emanuel Steward, who trains and manages rising middleweight star
Andy Lee (15-0, 12 KOs) of Ireland. He has as much faith in Lee as any young fighter he's ever been involved with. Steward has to be the only person ever to want one of his fighters to face
Winky Wright, one of the best in the world, but a guy almost impossible to look good against and a guy whose only loss this decade was a competitive decision to light heavyweight champion
Bernard Hopkins last summer. I was talking to Steward recently about upcoming fights involving two of his more accomplished boxers -- heavyweight titlist
Wladimir Klitschko and welterweight beltholder
Kermit Cintron -- when our discussion turned to Lee. We were talking about how good Lee looked during his fifth-round TKO of
Alejandro Falliga a couple of weeks ago when Steward startled me by saying that after Lee faces
Brian Vera on ESPN2 on March 21, he wants Wright. "I think he's the prefect fight for Andy. We have no fear," Steward said. OK, then. I doubt Wright would take that fight but it sure would be interesting if he did.
• As disappointing as a loss can be for the fighter, it can also drain a promoter. I actually feel bad for
Dan Goossen, who has put a lot of time and effort into the career of
Paul Williams. Goossen really believed he had something special in Williams and was extremely disappointed in his upset loss to
Carlos Quintana on Saturday night. It was the second important fight that one of his boxers has lost in recent weeks. Heavyweight
Eddie Chambers dropped a decision to
Alexander Povetkin in Germany on Jan. 26 in a fight that earned the winner a title shot. When I spoke to Goossen on Monday morning, I felt a little like a bartender listening to a guy drowning his sorrows in a beer. "I feel like the Bills of the 1990s," Goossen told me. "Chambers and then Paul. You get so close. You're at the big dance and you just don't bring home the trophy. We had the powerhouse [Williams] going into the fight and instead of the six-loss Giants beating the Patriots, it was the 7-to-1 underdog Quintana beating Paul. It happens in sports. It was shocking."
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Dan Rafael
