There may be no lonelier man in sports than the fighter whose words are used to augment the swiftness and savagery of his downfall. When members of Williams’s team leveled poorly-veiled accusations of PED use at Charlo, they only worsened their fighter’s defeat. Widely written off, Williams fought accordingly, facing a string of forgettable opponents in forgettable bouts while the division went on without him. In another example of boxing’s twisted logic, that moribundity made a mandatory challenger of Williams, putting him in line for one of Jarrett “Swift” Hurd’s many titles.
Read Staying Power: Julian Williams Rocks Jarrett Hurd on Hannibal Boxing.
In Between Rounds 