By John McMullen
Atlantic City, NJ (The Phan) - He's billed as one of the most feared fighters in the world but the tables were turned on Paul Williams last night at historic Boardwalk Hall.
After Williams and Sergio Martinez dueled in a classic 12-round slugfest that had Fight of the Year written all over it, Williams had to be concerned, maybe even scared, at the prospect of hearing the scorecards.
When it was over Williams could breathe a sigh of relief thanks to judge Pierre Benoist. The athletic left-hander earned a majority decision over Martinez with Benoist inexplicably scored the razor-close fight 119-110 in favor of Williams.
Lynne Carter had it 115-113 for Williams and Julie Lederman scored the bout 114-114. The Phanatic Magazine also scored it 114-114.
Benoist's strange scorecard especially upset Martinez's promoter, Lou DiBella, who exploded after the announcement.
"Either he's incompetent -- or worse," DiBella said of Benoist, "because there is no explanation for that score. I'm not going to cry because I had my guy winning by one point but come on. That's corrupt. I'm glad I don't know what he looks like because I might punch him myself."
Martinez (44-2-2), the junior middleweight champ, went down at the 1:57 mark of Round 1 from a glancing blow before recovering to knock Williams silly in the final seconds of the round.
The 28-year-old Williams began bleeding over his left eye during the fourth round after an accidental head butt from Martinez, who often resorted to clinching to overcome Williams' huge reach advantage.
Williams (38-1, 27 KOs) was the much busier fighter throughout throwing a high volume of punches, while Martinez' plan was to counter and he was far more accurate and cleaner with his punching.
According to the CompuBox numbers, Williams threw as many power punches (631) as Martinez had total punches (638) but Martinez landed 40 percent of his blows to 31 percent for Williams.
"They called (Williams) the most feared man in the world, but I didn't have any fear at all in this bout," Martinez said.
Williams, who was originally supposed to fight middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik on Oct. 3, a bout that was postponed twice due to a staph infection on Pavlik's left hand, has now won five straight fights since his only career loss -- a unanimous decision loss to Carlos Quintana in February 2008.
The undercard was headlined by a pair heavyweight bouts. Chris Arreola (28-1, 25 KOs) defeated a game Brian Minto (34-3, 21 KOs) with a fourth-round TKO and veteran Tony "The Tiger" Thompson (33-2, 21 KOs) stopped Philly native Chazz Witherspoon (26-2, 18 KOs) in the ninth round of an entertaining fight.
In non-televised action former welterweight titlist Carlos Quintana (27-2, 21 KOs) suffered a second-round knockdown but rebounded for a third-round TKO of Jesse Feliciano (15-8-3, 9 KOs) in a junior middleweight bout while junior featherweight prospect Jorge Diaz (11-0, 7 KOs) destroyed Luis Paneto (5-7-2, 2 KOs) in the first round.
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