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Doug Fischer

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Prospect Spotlight: Aaron Williams
By Doug Fischer (Aug 15, 2007) Photo © Emily Harney

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I first heard about Aaron Williams immediately following the 2003 U.S. national amateur championships that took place in Colorado Springs, Colorado when the Cleveland native was among the nation’s best in the 201-pound division.

Longtime amateur observer James Gogue covered the event and provided a talent watch for MaxBoxing readers.

This is what Gogue had to say about the 201-pound finals, which was won by eventual U.S. Olympic representative Devin Vargas, who scored a RSC (referee stops contest) in a tough bout:

“Williams was winning the fight until the thin air of Colorado and inexperience caught up with the 16-year-old phenom in the final round.”

Actually the bout was stopped 1:31 into the third round of the four-round bout, but just the fact that a SIXTEEN year old made it to the finals (beating such amateur standouts as Matt Godfrey and Charles Ellis along the way) and was competitive with the older and much more experienced Vargas suggested that Williams would likely develop into a professional prospect worth watching in a couple of years.

Well, at age 21, that time has come, and Williams, now an unbeaten cruiserweight, announced his arrival to the professional boxing world with an impressive second-round knockout of Deleon Tinsley on the undercard of an ESPN2-televised show this past June.

Williams, currently 14-0-1 (10), caught the 7-1-1 Tinsley with a big right hand that not only knocked the southern journeyman out, but out of the ring – a spectacle that was sensational enough for the KO victory to rate no. 3 on SportsCenter’s ‘Play of the Day’ that evening.

“We got some very good exposure and mileage out of the Deleon knockout, but despite his 7-1-1 record, Deleon was really a journeyman,” said Patrick Doljanin, the co-manager of Williams, “but Aaron has improved so much in the last year, I think it’s time we stepped up his level of competition.”

Doljanin believes Williams, who won eight national junior amateur tournaments (which includes four Silver Gloves titles in four different weight classes), is ready to take on his fellow prospects or more seasoned veterans. Team Williams – which consists of Doljanin, co-manager Albert Falcon, trainer Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, and promoter Jimmy Burchfield – thought they had an August 24th match made with Alfredo Escalera Jr., the cruiserweight son of the former 130-pound champ from Puerto Rico who, like Williams, holds a 14-0-1 record.

“We signed our end of the deal,” said Doljanin. “The bout was supposed to be the co-feature to a Joe DeGuardia promoted show in the Bronx and it would have been on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights, but I guess Escalera got cold feet because his people pulled him out of it.

“It’s too bad because that’s the kind of fight that boxing needs. You had two prospects facing off, both are young and strong and undefeated. It’s what boxing is supposed to be all about. But I guess they weren’t ready to find out how good Escalera is.”

Doljanin now turns his sights to other potential opponents for Williams, such as 13-3 Derrick Brown, a New York-based spoiler who held Escalera to a six-round draw and went the 10-round distance with Matt Godfrey in a close points loss in his last two bouts.

“People I’ve talked to in the business say that Brown won that draw with Escalera,” Doljanin said. “We saw Brown’s fight with Godfrey. Aaron knocked out Jeffery Brownfield in one round on the undercard. Aaron came out and watched Godfrey and Brown for about three rounds and then walked out. They were throwing like 20 punches a round. Aaron figured he’d seen enough.

“Matt made it a closer fight than it should have been, but Brown’s the kind of guy who can help us gauge where Aaron is at. Another guy that Brown fought to a draw is Gary Gomez, a tough, rugged fighter out of Utah who has never been stopped or off his feet. Gomez is another guy I’m looking at for Aaron. Gomez is supposed to fight Jeremy Williams this Saturday, which is a good fight to gauge where [Jeremy] Williams is at. So the winner of that fight would be a perfect opponent for Aaron. Williams has a name, and was and still could be a very good fighter. Gomez is as tough as they come.”

The fact that Gomez has gone the 10-round distance six times vs. solid opposition and has never been so much as wobbled or that Williams is a veteran of 47 pro bouts and was known as a puncher at heavyweight does not bother Doljanin, who is confident moving his 21-year-old prodigy forward not just because of the young man’s impressive amateur background but because of his maturity and dedication to the sport.

“I met Aaron through Jesse Reid, who was training one of my fighters, Speedy Gonzalez, at the time,” recalled Doljanin. “Jesse said he’d met a talented 18-year-old kid in Las Vegas who was looking for a manager. So I got some names of some boxing people in Cleveland and everyone had great things to say about Aaron. I spent some time with him in Las Vegas and I found out that he was not only a talented boxer and athlete, but that he was an all-around good kid, and incredibly mature for someone his age. Aaron is very focused and very serious about his life and his career.

“He’s also a real sponge when it comes to boxing. Being at the Top Rank gym, where he trains, is a learning experience. I love hanging out there, because I learn. And he’s the same way. He doesn’t bolt for the door once his workout is finished like a lot of young boxers do. He sticks around and talks to guys like Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Mike McCallum.”

Williams had already been exposed to some of the most knowledgeable and experienced minds in boxing while still in the amateurs as a part of the Kronk Gym Amateur team.

“I was sponsored by Emanuel Steward back in the Silver Gloves days,” said Williams, who stands an athletic 6-foot-1 with a formidable wingspan and a very strong right hand. “In fact, I lived with Manny for two years, and during that time I would go to camp with Lennox Lewis and Tommy Hearns, when the Hitman was making a comeback. One of the assistant coaches to Manny at the time was Milton McCrory, so I was surrounded by legends.”

However, what Williams learned from his days with the Kronk team was not enough to overcome his youth and relative inexperience compared to the other top 201 pounders that were competing at the 2003 U.S. Olympic Trials. It wasn’t enough to overcome the politics of the amateur game, either, as Williams recalls.

“I had to box Devin [Vargas] again in the Trials,” Williams said. “I dropped him with a body shot in the first round. I thought I was beating him in every round, I was up on points, but then they said the computer broke in the last round. That’s what they told me, anyway. And Devin won. I was like ‘Man, before then, you said I was up, I recall like 14-7’. What’s up with that, you know? It was one of those things that make you go ‘Hmmm’.

“I see why they did it. I was young, with hardly any open [amateur] experience and I was kind of small compared to the other heavyweights. But the experience made me sick of amateur politics. I sat out for almost a year and decided to come to Las Vegas to turn pro after my friend Ron Johnson, a light heavyweight prospect form Cleveland. Johnson had been to Vegas before, he knew Laila Ali and was training with Mayweather Sr. He talked me into it, and I decided it was time for a leap of faith. I bought a one-way ticket (I didn’t have enough money for a round-trip), met up with Ron and stayed with him.

“It wasn’t long before I met Pat [Doljanin] and Albert [Falcon] after my first pro fight. I signed with them and things have been going great since then.”

Williams arrived to Las Vegas shortly after his 18th birthday, and literally got right into the swing of things as a sparring partner to world-class fighters.

“When I first came to Vegas I sparred with Ricardo Mayorga to help get him ready for his fight with [Felix] Trinidad,” Williams recalled. “I guess they wanted me because of my height. I was running around the ring and using my speed; I was still an amateur in style. But I’ve learned to slow down, pace myself and I’m sitting down on my punches now. Not long after Mayorga, I was sparring with Chris Byrd and Hasim Rahman. I was the main sparring partner for Chad Dawson before he won his title against [Tomasz] Adamek.”

The in-the-ring experience Williams gets in the gyms of Las Vegas is second to none, but it’s the out-of-ring knowledge he gleans from his trainer, a former light heavyweight champ, that the young man truly relishes.

“I met Muhammad in the gym when I first got to Las Vegas,” said Williams. “I got to know him before he trained me. I would always talk to him at the Top Rank Gym after my workouts. We always talked boxing because he has the same kind of passion for boxing that I have. He’s also a Muslim, so we have that in common, too, and we talked about religion. We could talk about anything. I respect what Eddie has to say because he let’s me know what’s really going on and I trust his opinions. I have a lot of respect for him.

“So we already had that bond, that friendship, that relationship before he became my trainer.”

With a tight management and training team in place, all Williams needed was a promoter to get him regular fights. Jimmy Burchfield’s CES was the natural choice because of the connections that were already in place. Doljanin co-manages Joey Spina, a Rhode Island-based super middleweight fringe contender who is promoted by Burchfield and is also trained by Muhammad in Las Vegas.

Since signing with CES in April of this year, Williams has fought three times (including the ESPN2-televised bout) and will likely fight once more before the end of the year.

“We’re very happy with CES,” said Doljanin. “It was hell getting Aaron to 10-0-1 without having a promoter. We know we’re in good hands with Jimmy. He took Scotty Pemberton, a guy with 13 or 14 amateur fights, and got him to a world title shot. He took Joey Spina, a guy with 14 amateur fights, and got him a $100,000 payday [vs. Peter Mandfredo Jr.].”

Of course, being with CES, which also promotes undefeated cruiserweight contender Matt Godfrey, it’s only a matter of time before folks begin to clamor for a pro showdown between the two former amateur standouts who met three times in the unpaid ranks.

Williams knows this, but insists that he’s not in a hurry to resume the rivalry.

“I’ll fight him, but I’m still in the growing stage,” Williams said. “I see why they are moving him so fast because he’s older. He’s on a fast track, but I’m not thinking about the future. My mind is on right now. Besides that we’re pretty good friends. But we both know that we’ll probably wind up fighting. That’s how it is; that’s the rules of the game.”

The young man is learning those rules incredibly fast. Williams has shown vast technical improvements since his first fight of the year, a six rounder against veteran heavyweight journeyman Charles Davis in January. The Davis fight can be seen on Max-TV.

“I hurt Davis twice in the first round, put him down in fact, but that guy was not going anywhere,” Williams said of the experienced spoiler who owns a 2004 decision over then-prospect Javier Mora and went the 10-round distance with heavyweight standout Kevin Johnson before their fight. “I had to get focused and box him. I had to really think with him because he had the experience to keep me from doing what I wanted to do to him. I like being in the ring with experienced guys, they keep my on my Ps and Qs.”