Paul 'The Punisher' Williams: The Tall Southpaw Who Outworked Margarito and Coached On After Paralysis

Paul Williams was the tall southpaw from the Augusta area whom many welterweights and middleweights preferred to avoid. Nicknamed "The Punisher," he took the WBO welterweight title from Antonio Margarito in 2007 by sheer volume, fought Sergio Martínez twice in Atlantic City, and was a week into his first pay-per-view headliner deal when a motorcycle crash in May 2012 left him paralyzed below the waist. Four years later he was back in boxing, coaching from a wheelchair.

A School Bus Driver, a Boxing Club and George Peterson

Williams was born on July 27, 1981. Wikipedia gives his birthplace as Augusta, Georgia, but he spent his childhood across the Savannah River in Aiken, South Carolina, and by the time of his accident ESPN was describing Grovetown, Georgia, a suburb of Augusta, as his hometown.

A 2015 profile in Vice by Jason Langendorf traced his boxing beginnings to a school bus driver. Lee Wells, a former amateur boxer from Harlem, saw an eight-year-old who kept finding small trouble in Aiken and brought him to the Aiken Boxing Club. Wells stayed his mentor until he died of a heart attack while driving Williams to a tournament. After that loss the boy drifted, and he only returned to the sport at the Final Round gym run by George Peterson.

Peterson became much more than a coach. In the Vice account he taught the teenager practical trades such as plumbing and property upkeep and pushed him to take responsibility for himself. When Williams turned professional in 2000, Peterson was his trainer and manager, and he stayed in both roles for the whole career. ESPN reported in 2012 that the two had worked together for roughly fourteen years.

Reach, Volume and a Reputation Nobody Wanted

Williams was a physical oddity at 147 pounds. Vice lists him at 6 feet 1 inch, while Wikipedia gives 6 feet 2 inches with a 78-inch reach; either way he towered over most welterweights. He fought left-handed, and he did not depend on one-punch power. His method was to bury opponents under combinations from long range and move his feet to escape the counters that came back.

That combination made him an unattractive assignment for anyone protecting a belt, and he went unbeaten through his first 33 professional fights before getting a title shot.

Carson, July 2007: Outworking Antonio Margarito

The champion who finally said yes was Antonio Margarito, the hard-hitting Mexican who held the WBO welterweight belt. They met on July 14, 2007, at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, in front of a sell-out crowd of more than 7,000, according to David A. Avila's ringside report for The Sweet Science. Williams came in at 33-0 with 24 knockouts; Margarito was 34-5 with 24 knockouts.

Williams' plan was to bank the early rounds against a fighter known to start slowly, and it worked. Margarito pressed hard from the fifth round onward and opened a cut over Williams' left eye in the eleventh, but Williams steadied himself behind his jab and footwork in the final round. The judges scored it 116-112, 115-113 and 115-113 for Williams. CompuBox counted 288 punches landed by Williams against 181 for Margarito, and Wikipedia's Margarito entry says Williams averaged more than 100 punches thrown per round. Margarito called the decision a robbery and insisted his punches were the heavier ones.

Losing the Belt and Taking It Back in One Round

The reign was brief. On February 9, 2008, at Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California, Carlos Quintana beat Williams by unanimous decision in what many observers saw as a mild upset. The rematch, on June 7, 2008, at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, lasted 2 minutes and 15 seconds. A left hand hurt Quintana early and a sustained flurry forced the referee to stop it inside the first round, returning the WBO title to Williams.

He vacated that belt later in 2008 and moved up. On November 29, 2008, in Ontario, California, he stopped Verno Phillips after eight rounds, when the ringside doctor ended the fight, to win the WBO interim junior middleweight title. On April 11, 2009, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, he fought former junior middleweight champion Winky Wright at middleweight and won a one-sided unanimous decision: two judges gave Wright a single round and the third scored all twelve for Williams.

Two Nights in Atlantic City With Sergio Martínez

On December 5, 2009, Williams met the Argentine southpaw Sergio Martínez at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Both men were knocked down in the first round, and the fight stayed wild throughout. The cards read 119-110 and 115-113 for Williams and 114-114 even, giving him a majority decision; the wide 119-110 score sat far from the other two.

Williams then won a split technical decision over Kermit Cintrón in Carson on May 8, 2010, after Cintrón tumbled through the ropes in the fourth round and could not continue. The Martínez rematch followed on November 20, 2010, again at Boardwalk Hall. It ended early in the second round: as Williams loaded up a punch of his own, Martínez caught him with a short left that left him unconscious on the canvas.

The Lara Verdict and a Last Win in Texas

Williams' next fight raised questions of a different kind. On July 9, 2011, again in Atlantic City, Cuban southpaw Erislandy Lara repeatedly landed hard left hands and seemed to most observers to have won clearly. The judges gave Williams a majority decision, and the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board later suspended all three of them.

On February 18, 2012, in Corpus Christi, Texas, Williams beat Japan's Nobuhiro Ishida by unanimous decision. It was his 41st win, and it turned out to be his last fight. Soon after, he signed to face Saul "Canelo" Álvarez in Las Vegas on September 15, 2012, which would have been his first pay-per-view main event.

May 27, 2012: The Crash Near Atlanta

On May 27, 2012, Williams was riding his Suzuki Hayabusa to meet the wedding party for his brother Leon, at whose wedding he was due to be best man. According to Vice, a car drifted toward him from the right, he swerved left and found another vehicle coming from the opposite direction. ESPN's account says he ended up riding up a steep embankment and losing control. Wikipedia puts his speed at about 75 mph and says he was thrown about sixty feet.

Early reports did not agree on the extent of the injury. Some initial accounts, citing Peterson, said the spinal cord had been severed. ESPN later quoted the medical director of Atlanta's Shepherd Center, Dr. Donald P. Leslie, as saying the cord was not severed but badly damaged, after Williams had surgery at Emory University Hospital to stabilize a fracture in the middle of his back. The result was paralysis below the waist. The Álvarez fight was cancelled and Williams, 41-2 with 27 knockouts, never boxed again.

Life After the Ring and a Return as a Trainer

Williams met the injury with jokes at first; Peterson told ESPN the fighter's response was, "Don't worry about it; we'll take care of it." Vice described the darker period that followed, the denial and the daily struggles of adjusting to life in a wheelchair, and noted that Williams left inpatient rehabilitation at Shepherd Center after about a week, determined to manage on his own. By 2013 he had set up the Paul Williams Foundation and was visiting gyms around South Carolina to work with at-risk young people.

In March 2016 he came back to boxing as a trainer. On March 25 of that year he worked the corner, in his wheelchair, for Augusta super welterweight Justin DeLoach, then 13-1, in an eight-round ShoBox bout against unbeaten Dillon Cook at Buffalo Run Casino in Miami, Oklahoma. Round By Round Boxing quoted Williams before the fight: "I'm scared all over again, like this is my first fight."

Asked by Vice how he was doing years after the crash, he kept it short: "Life, man. I'm breathing."

Sources

• Paul Williams (boxer), Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• Antonio Margarito, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• Paul Williams Starts Quick, Wins WBO Title (David A. Avila), The Sweet Science, July 14, 2007
• Paul Williams' future uncertain / Doctors cannot determine if Paul Williams will walk again, ESPN, May 2012
• In Paul Williams' Corner (Kelsey McCarson), The Sweet Science, May 30, 2013
• Down but Not Out: The Story of Paralyzed Former Boxing Champion Paul Williams (Jason Langendorf), Vice, January 22, 2015
• Paul Williams Returns to Boxing as a Trainer, Round By Round Boxing, March 25, 2016