You don’t need much time in Austin “Ammo” Williams’ orbit to understand why he sits a little apart from the pack.
He’s perched outside his Palm Beach home, the Florida sun flickering in and out as if undecided, his cap turned backward, phone resting in his hand. When he looks up, it’s with an intensity that feels directed straight at you — focused, deliberate — almost as if his eyes were piercing through the target, as all boxers are taught to do with their jabs.
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In a few days’ time, that same edge will be carried north to New York.
Beneath the lights of Madison Square Garden, Williams (19-1, 13 KOs) will step onto the Teofimo Lopez vs. Shakur Stevenson undercard knowing the stakes have never been higher. Across the ring will stand Carlos Adames (24-1-1, 18 KOs), the Dominican champion guarding the WBC middleweight title, and for the first time in his career, “Ammo” will be fighting not just for position or momentum — but for a world championship.
“Everything’s different this time around,” Williams tells Uncrowned. “I’m not going to pinpoint anything in this camp because it’s a culmination. I’ve been working with my trainer Kevin [Cunningham] on specific things since my loss to Hamzah [Sheeraz], and if I am being honest, that defeat was the best thing that’s happened to my career to date. Everything is starting to click.”
Williams dropped an 11th-round TKO loss to England’s Sheeraz in June 2024, but wins over Gian Garrido, Patrice Volny and Ivan Vazquez have since positioned the middleweight with a chance to top the mountain at 160 pounds.
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“I think it was a wake-up call,” he says. “I wasn’t focused enough on boxing at all. It’s crazy to think back on it now, because it’s become so clear to me. I wasn’t mature enough to understand how blessed I was to be given these massive opportunities and to be signed by Matchroom. That loss enabled me to take a step back, look at the bigger picture and think, ‘Wow, I need to learn some lessons now and realign my life.’
“So I decided to relocate out here with my wife [lightweight Sharahya Taina Moreu] and take boxing more seriously. Now, after a fight, I can be right back in the gym and close to my trainer.»
It isn’t only the scenery that has shifted around Williams, 29.
Austin Williams prepares for his win over Ivan Vazquez at The Ford Center at The Star on July 19, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (Photo by Melina Pizano/Getty Images)
(Melina Pizano via Getty Images)
In his search to wring every last percentage point from talent that’s never really been in doubt, Williams has been willing to wander off the well-worn boxing trail. He speaks about his body not as a fixed asset, but as something to be studied, tested and optimized — a tool with hidden gears still waiting to be unlocked.
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It’s a mindset that has led him down routes most fighters never consider, all in pursuit of discovering just how far his physical ceiling can stretch.
“I’ve tried it all — ballet, singing, dancing, performing art,” he explains. “And there are different learnings from each of them that I can take with me into boxing.
“With dance and the performing arts, structurally — from a muscular and skeletal understanding — I can see when a fighter is misaligned, or unbalanced. You can see it in the hips and the shoulders, and where they are disconnected to Earth’s gravity. It takes a lot of work to hold the different foot positionings in ballet — first, second, third, fourth and fifth — so that was a real education that gave me an insight into the human skeletal system.
“Singing too. I have practiced all the different breathing techniques that are required to sing at the top level. In learning about the throat and the larynx, I am able to listen out for breathing patterns in sparring, knowing when an opponent is struggling for breath and not getting enough oxygen into their lungs. I can tell if they are hyperventilating just by the sounds that are coming out of their mouths.
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“And with dance it’s pretty obvious — rhythm. You know, if you go to a party and listen to some music and just groove to it. In boxing, this rhythm is the thing that gives you the continuation or the momentum of force with your punches. … A stiff fighter without much movement is a much easier target than one who can glide around the ring.»
When Williams starts unpacking what he’s learned along the way, it’s hard not to lean in. He speaks with the clarity of someone who has done the work properly — not just picked up buzzwords, but absorbed the information. His obsession with getting better inside the ropes is obvious, almost consuming, yet it’s quickly clear that boxing isn’t sitting at the top of his hierarchy.
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Mention his wife and daughter and the edges soften instantly.
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“Before my daughter, I wasn’t able to magnify my blessings as easily,» he says. «My motivation and purpose were a little more foggy. But now, everything is clear. When I have her future to consider and fight for, I don’t feel tired when I am working on the heavy bag anymore. These are simply the motivations you don’t have until you have them.
“And having my wife in my life is such a victory in itself. Because she is such an established fighter herself, we are able to get home and talk about little things from the day, like the nuances of a sparring session or details of training.
“I look up to her so much and benefit so much from having such an intelligent fighting mind to bounce ideas off. She’s my partner in crime; a safety net to fall into when I get home if I have had a day where I have been criticized or struggled in the sport that we both know so well.”
If Williams is to achieve his dream Saturday night then he will have to go through Adames — something only Patrick Teixeira has done in the pro ranks, albeit at junior middleweight.
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Adames, 31, is not a fighter you ease yourself into. He meets you head-on, chest-first, with a pace that feels uncomfortable even through a television screen. There’s a certain violence to the way he occupies space in the ring, with everything he throws looking like it’s designed to leave a mark.
Defensively, he’s not trying to be particularly elusive. Adames trusts his chin, trusts his strength and trusts that if he lands first or last, he’s probably winning the exchange. That confidence — some might call it stubbornness — is central to who he is as a fighter. He’s built for pressure, for late rounds and for moments when the fight turns ugly and someone has to prove he belongs at world level.
So how does Williams plan to negate the undeniable attributes of the middleweight champion?
“I try to destroy in every single fight. It’s who I am as a fighter,” he explains. “I will always try to dominate. Maybe that’s where I went wrong in my loss to Hamzah, but it’s not me; it’s not my nature.
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“Kevin saw [Adames] sparring and he came back telling me that it’s going to be an easy night’s work for me. I won’t go into the details of what he saw, but he is stylistically a good matchup.»
Williams revealed his mental health struggles a few years back and attributes structure, family and the support he received from inside the sport as the main reasons for his successful return.
Hamzah Sheeraz (left) drops Austin Williams during their middleweight bout June 1, 2024, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing/Getty Images)
(Mark Robinson via Getty Images)
“Sometimes you have to hit those rock-bottom lows in order to rise to the top again,” he says. “It hasn’t always been an easy ride since, though. After the loss to Sheeraz — and the passing of my grandfather — I struggled a lot with my identity in the sport. I couldn’t ride off the fact that I was an unbeaten boxer anymore. I had never felt that loss, that shame or that embarrassment. That’s pretty big for someone to experience for the first time.
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“But due to my previous struggles, I now had that foundation to realize what I needed to do to get through it. I had to re-identify myself and figure out who I was again. Who was I on the other side of that fence? And I was able to do that as I still had my wife, my career — it wasn’t all over.»
Still, the fight game is the fight game, and maintaining a healthy mental perspective is no easy task.
“I can’t think of losing this fight,” Williams says. “As much as I’m telling you what I have gone through and how much it sucked, I never gained a mindset of, ‘OK, since I went through that, I’ll be fine.’
«My entire mindset is on becoming champion of the world, and if I don’t, I won’t be OK. I won’t be. I will not be having any sense of solace or peace in my heart just because I’ve been through it once before. I can’t. I won’t. I will not lose. I’m giving it everything I’ve got.»
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Williams says he is going to finish Saturday’s bout in the seventh round with a “shot that nobody sees coming,” setting a pace that “Adames won’t be able to keep up with.”
“Even winning this title is not enough for the greatness I see for myself. Not to knock anyone in sports or make people feel as if they have to be perfect in order to be successful. But I don’t want that to be my image at all, because I don’t believe in that. When you are achieving greatness, there can be no wiggle room for accepting anything other than greatness — and greatness is victory.”
