`Winky' May Have Been TOO Good

LAS VEGAS -- Winky Wright had barely finished giving the performance of his life and already he was talking about how he and Felix Trinidad should do it again.

Wright had his reasons, of course. The contract he signed to fight Trinidad contained a lucrative rematch clause that would pay him millions more than the money he got for his astonishing win Saturday night over the former middleweight champion.

The problem is, Wright was so dominating against Trinidad that it's hard to figure out how to sell the rematch as a competitive fight.

Still, Wright, who is from St. Petersburg, was doing his best to try.

"He showed a lot of heart," Wright said, attempting to make a case for Trinidad. "I just can't wait for the rematch."

Promoter Don King apparently can't, either, talking up a second fight while in the same breath acknowledging that Trinidad was "discombobulated" against Wright.

The way Wright picked Trinidad apart round after round in their middleweight showdown, though, there doesn't seem to be much of a chance Trinidad could be competitive if the two fighters fought 10 more times.

The old boxing adage is style makes fights, and Wright's style so confused Trinidad that he was credited with landing 58 punches the entire fight to 262 for Wright. Worse yet for the power punching Trinidad, none of those punches even came close to hurting Wright.

In his first fight at 160 pounds, Wright was so dominant he won all 12 rounds on one ringside scorecard, and 11 of the 12 on the other two.

"I said I was going to win every round, one by one, and I did," Wright said.

The fight was vindication for Wright, who toiled in virtual obscurity much of his 15 years as a professional fighter before taking advantage of his big chance last year by beating Shane Mosley twice in 154-pound title fights.

A slick southpaw with great defensive skills, Wright doesn't have a big knockout punch. But he might have the best jab in the business, as he showed by landing it 185 times to Trinidad's face, often snapping his head back with it.

"Once I saw the jab working and saw I hurt him when I hit him with it I just kept using it," Wright said.

Wright earned his biggest payday ever -- $4 million -- but even before the fight was talking about the money he could make in a rematch. He said then that he hoped he didn't hurt Trinidad so badly that he wouldn't want to fight again.

Trinidad didn't show up at the post-fight news conference, so it was hard to tell what he thought about his future in boxing.