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Julian Williams’ trainer: ‘He should be ready to go by August or September’

Stephen Edwards, the trainer of Julian Williams, believes his charge will be ready for a tune-up fight as soon as late summer.

It’s not if Julian Williams will fight Jeison Rosario again, it’s when.

Williams recently decided not to exercise his contractual right to an immediate rematch with Rosario, the Dominican contender who stopped him in five rounds in a significant upset on Jan. 18. However, Stephen Edwards, the trainer of Williams, says they have every intention of fighting Rosario again. Just not next. They need time to heal and regroup.

“Julian just had surgery [to repair damaged skin around] both of his eyes last week,” Edwards told BoxingScene.com. “He can’t even spar until May or June. We wouldn’t be ready for a rematch in a reasonable period of time.”

In the fight, Rosario (20-1-1, 14 KOs) opened up a large gash over Williams’ left eye, which immediately changed the tenor of the fight.

“It’s counterproductive to rush into a rematch without getting his eye fixed and his eye was a big reason he lost in the first place,” Edward said. “But Team Rosario has expressed to me personally that they are honorable and will give us the rematch very soon. Just not next because we won’t be ready.”

Sampson Lewkowicz, the promoter of Rosario, told Boxing Junkie that Rosario “100%” plans to give Williams a rematch whenever he is ready.

Edwards believes Williams (27-2-1, 16 KOs) should be ready for a tune-up fight by late summer.

“He should be ready to go by August or September,” he said.

Edwards does not know who the opponent will be yet. In the meantime, the trainers says Williams won’t be peddling any excuses.

“What I’ve learned is it’s no use talking about what went wrong publicly,” Edwards said. “It always sounds like an excuse and, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The result is what matters.

“Julian just has to redeem himself. Jeison Rosario fought a great fight, and he got the win.”

Follow Sean Nam on Twitter @seanpasbon

Julian Williams won’t ask for immediate rematch with Jeison Rosario

Multiple outlets have reported that Julian Williams is not interested in pursuing an immediate rematch against Jeison Rosario.

The future appears to be wide open for Jeison Rosario.

Former junior middleweight titleholder Julian Williams is forgoing his contractual right to an immediate rematch against Rosario, the Dominican contender who scored a shocking stoppage of Williams on Jan. 18 in the latter’s inaugural title defense in his hometown of Philadelphia, multiple outlets have reported.

The reason? Williams (27-2-1, 16 KOs) needs to recover from surgery on the cut he suffered over his left eye in the Rosario fight. Provided Rosario is still a titleholder, Williams has every intention of pursuing a rematch later in the year, according to BoxingScene.com. The feeling apparently is mutual.

“When Williams wants the rematch, Rosario will give it to him, 100%,” Sampson Lewkowicz, Rosario’s promoter, told Boxing Junkie. “For now, Williams has a medical problem.”

That leaves Rosario (20-1-1, 14 KOs), who turns 25 in April, with a few options in a division teeming with intriguing possibilities. He could face his mandatory in Russian Bakhram Murtazaliev (17-0, 13 KOs). Or, more compellingly, he could head straight into a unification against fellow titleholder Jermell Charlo (33-1, 17 KOs), who revenged his disputed loss to Tony Harrison (28-3, 21 KOs) last December. Both Charlo and Rosario are aligned with Premier Boxing Champions, so that would be a relatively easy matchup to make.

Rosario’s upset of Williams was just another eye-opening outcome in the ultra competitive 154-pound division. Last year, Williams upset multiple-belt titleholder Jarrett Hurd (24-1, 16 KOs) in impressive fashion. All in all, the division has produced some of the most interesting story lines of any weight class.

As for Williams, he is staring down at yet another attempt at a comeback. He was knocked out by current middleweight titleholder Jermall Charlo (Jermell’s twin brother) in 2016 before making a statement against Hurd last year. Williams’ trainer Stephen Edwards has set the bar high for his charge the second time around. Shortly after the upset loss to Rosario, Edwards was adamant about getting revenge.

“[Williams] cannot go out on his career losing to that kid, I’m sorry,” Edwards said on the TalkBox Boxing Podcast. “[The loss to] Jermall Charlo, I can accept that a little bit. You know, that guy may go to the Hall of Fame, and we can say we fought him when Julian was a little young at the time and that he caught Julian with a great shot.

“This fight (against Rosario), I can’t stomach that. I’m serious. I just can’t.”

Follow Sean Nam on Twitter @seanpasbon

Julian Williams’ trainer: JRock has to KO Rosario in rematch

Stephen Edwards, the trainer of Julian Williams, believes his charge not only needs to beat Jeison Rosario, but do so by knockout.

The trainer of Julian Williams wants his charge to avenge his stunning upset loss to Jeison Rosario on Jan. 18. And he wants him to do so by knockout.

Stephen Edwards, Williams’ longtime trainer, set the bar high for Williams during an appearance on the Everlast TalkBox Podcast.

“I may get overruled on this, I don’t know,” Edwards said, “but for me being able to go to sleep at night and what I believe Julian is at, he gotta get that loss the f— back.

“I don’t care who don’t like this. He gotta fight that kid again and he gotta knock that kid out.”

Talk about pressure.

Williams made strong statement last May when he upset Jarrett Hurd to win two junior middleweight titles. It was a remarkable comeback for a fighter who had been written off by some after suffering a knockout loss at the hands of Jermall Charlo in 2016.

A rematch with Hurd was expected to take place in December but Hurd, for whatever reason, declined. In stepped Rosario, a hard-hitting, but relatively unknown Dominican who was expected to be something of a tune-up for Williams. There were even tentative plans to have Williams face a fellow titleholder in a unification bout this summer.

The 24-year-old Rosario had other plans. Rosario busted up Williams’ eye early in the fight and then stopped the Philadelphian in the fifth-round in front of his hometown crowd.

Edwards, still smarting from the loss, believes a knockout in the rematch will be the only way to conclusively put this episode behind them.

“If [Williams] don’t [knock out Rosario] I’m gonna be disappointed in him,” Edwards said. “I made it as clear as I can. I don’t know if [the rematch is] going to be next or whatever, but he gotta get that kid back.”

Edwards upped the ante.

“[Williams] cannot go out on his career losing to that kid, I’m sorry,” he said. “[The loss to] Jermall Charlo, I can accept that a little bit. You know, that guy may go to the Hall of Fame, and we can say we fought him when Julian was a little young at the time and that he caught Julian with a great shot.

“This fight (against Rosario), I can’t stomach that. I’m serious. I just can’t.”

Jeison Rosario scores stunning 5th-round KO of Julian Williams

No money? No problem: Bob Arum’s plan to get media to his cards

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum wants his fights covered by the media, even if it means having to help pay for their hotel and travel fees.

Bob Arum has a remedy of sorts for boxing’s ailing, cash-strapped media: help chip in for their hotel and travel costs.

The founder of Top Rank proposed the idea during a recent episode of the Everlast TalkBox podcast. Case in point is the junior welterweight title fight that Arum is staging in Haikou, China in February between titleholder Jose Ramirez and Viktor Postol.

“What I’m going to say is this is a long way away and the average cost of one of the reporters going to a fight if the fight was in the United Sates, you say, is (about) $200,” Arum said. “So we would charge them $200, pay for the air far, pay for the hotels. I think you gotta charge something. It’s not a good image if you charge them nothing. But if you charge a reasonable small amount, a token amount – like $200, or $250 – I think you’re going to accomplish what you do.”

He went on: “There is not one daily paper in the whole country that has a full time boxing writer. None. So how are we getting the news out on boxing? We’re getting it out basically from websites that can’t afford anything. They don’t have any money. They’re operating on views. So when a writer for one of those writers says I wanna go across country or to China to cover a big fight, the guy who owns the website says, ‘are you crazy, we don’t have any money to send you.’ And that’s bad.”

In other words, Arum would rather help subsidize reporters rather than risk having no coverage at all. Conflicts of interest be damned.

“We have to now realize that accommodations have to be made so that we can get the coverage for the sport that it deserves and the rules on propriety that existed in the ’70s and ’80s until now be no longer relevant,” he said. “Again, if this was 20 years ago, I would have said that’s outrageous, but it’s not 20 years ago, it’s today, it has to be done.”

There’s another world title fight taking place on the other side of the world and for which, Arum expects, there will be limited U.S. coverage.

“Look at this fight in Saudi Arabia (on December 7), (Anthony) Joshua-(Andy) Ruiz. Long way away. Cost a fortune to fly and so forth. Now these guys working for the website, obviously, the website isn’t going to send them … it’s too expensive. So the result is that no one is going to cover the fight in the United States.”

Note: Boxing Junkie does not accept travel subsidies from any outside sources.