Middleweight Champion Kelly Pavlik has not had a good year.
Since beating Jermain Taylor for the middleweight crown two years ago, Pavlik has defended his title only twice, and neither fight came against a worthy opponent. In that time, he did take a mandated rematch with Taylor at 168 pounds, a fight he just edged on the cards, as well as a light heavyweight fight against Bernard Hopkins in which he lost every round. Since the loss to Hopkins a year ago, Pavlik had done nothing significant until signing to fight Paul Williams on October 3.
That fight has been postponed due to Pavlik reportedly suffering from a staph infection. Now it might not be rescheduled at all.
Williams’ promoter Dan Goossen is understandably upset with the cancellation and is expressing his desire to put his fighter in the ring on October 3 regardless. While no opponents have been named, Goossen wants Williams to fight sooner rather than later to avoid a long layoff.
Williams first called out Pavlik one year ago, but Pavlik didn’t see the reward outweighing the risk in that one and instead took the fight against Hopkins. And who could blame him? The Hopkins fight landed Pavlik on pay-per-view and gave him the opportunity to fight one of the top four fighters in the world at that time. Since he wasn’t able to secure a fight with Joe Calzaghe, who was rated even higher than Hopkins and represented the fight boxing fans really wanted, he took the next best option for himself.
But unfortunately for Pavlik, things went horribly wrong as he was completely humiliated by Hopkins for twelve one-sided rounds. Hopkins made Pavlik look like an amateur and proved that he was not in his league, which meant he probably wasn’t in Calzaghe’s league either. Pavlik’s gamble failed, and his superstar status was crushed that night in October of 2008.
And did Pavlik take his beating like a man? Not at all. He claimed to have been suffering from illness before the fight and even commented on an elbow injury during training camp. His promoter Bob Arum couldn’t seem to get the story straight himself as he just blamed the loss on Pavlik moving up in weight. Everyone around Pavlik had an excuse for the defeat.
At that point, with no chance of getting a superfight with Calzaghe or a rematch with Hopkins, it was clear Pavlik’s only chance at redemption was to finally fight Arthur Abraham, the undefeated IBF Middleweight Champion, who had come to the United States to knock out Edison Miranda and try to negotiate a fight with Pavlik. From day one, though, Pavlik hid behind Arum regarding that particular fight, letting his promoter make the excuses about how Abraham was too much of an unknown to warrant that fight. Truth be told, Pavlik had no room to talk about star status after being obliterated by Hopkins.
Abraham’s team suggested putting Abraham on a Pavlik undercard, but it never materialized. The only time the fight ever looked like a possibility was after Arum and Pavlik saw signs of Abraham struggling to make the 160-pound limit when he had a tough fight against unknown Lajuan Simon. Then, Arum mentioned the fight as a possibility for late 2009 or early 2010, just about the time Abraham would be having to kill himself to make weight, leaving him a sitting duck for Pavlik. It’s no coincidence that Abraham has now moved to the super middleweight division to continue his career, right when Arum and Pavlik would have felt confident enough to fight the weight-drained version of him.
In a pathetic move that reeked of trying to delay the Abraham fight further, Pavlik’s team announced a fight with Sergio Mora in June. Mora had just been dominated by Vernon Forrest in September, thus outraging boxing fans, who demanded more of their Middleweight Champion than defenses against C level opponents.
Thankfully, the Mora travesty of a fight fell apart when Pavlik reported a staph infection in his hand – the same condition now preventing him from fighting Williams on October 3. Since then, Pavlik’s only fight has been rumored to have been a bar fight he and his trainer got into with some non-boxers. It’s time to take an honest look at the Middleweight Champion’s body of work.
For comparison’s sake, let’s look at the body of work of Jermain Taylor – the previous Middleweight Champion. Critics didn’t hesitate to put Taylor down for fighting what was considered weaker opposition. During his reign, Taylor defended the title against two junior middleweights, Kassim Ouma and Cory Spinks, and another who spent most of his career there, Winky Wright. Taylor failed to knock out any of these smaller men and even had a close decision against Spinks and a draw with Wright. But all of them were at least opponents recognizable to the boxing world. All of them had held titles at junior middleweight, and Spinks had been the undisputed Welterweight Champion as well. Wright was a consensus second in pound-for-pound rankings at the time of their fight, so Taylor’s draw with him actually added to his resume.
Pavlik’s defenses, on the other hand, came against guys that never belonged in the ring with him. Gary Lockett was the first victim in June of 2008, lasting all of three rounds and going down three times in the fight. The other defense came against Marco Rubio, who was only thrown in with Pavlik because he was signed with Top Rank, and Arum needed to cash in on him sometime. What’s worse, Rubio had lost to Ouma back in 2005. Rubio lasted nine rounds with Pavlik, which was about five more than he had any reason to. Pavlik’s best wins outside of his title reign came against Taylor, who was recently knocked out by Carl Froch, and Miranda, who was destroyed by Abraham.
Signing to fight Williams was the first good decision Pavlik made since becoming champion, and now he may have managed to blow that opportunity away. Williams shows up on any pound-for-pound list due to his ability to fluctuate between three weight classes and look just as impressive in each. He is best known for out hustling Antonio Margarito, who was probably using loaded gloves in the fight, at welterweight and dominating Wright in his last outing at middleweight. Those two wins alone are more impressive than anything Pavlik has done to this point.
Injuries are a part of boxing and have forced many great fighters to postpone fights. Calzaghe was notorious for pulling out or postponing fights due to hand injuries in training, and even Oscar De La Hoya had to postpone a fight or two for the same reason. But, unlike De La Hoya, Pavlik doesn’t have enough good will in the bank with boxing fans to keep slipping up as much as he has in the past year.
If he loses the chance to fight Williams, he’ll spend the next six months on the outside looking in as the top super middleweights, including Abraham, battle it out for true respect. Williams will move on with his career after waiting a year and a half for Pavlik. Boxing is all about “what have you done for me lately,” and Pavlik has caused a lot more damage than good in his reign as champion.
At this rate, it won’t be long before boxing fans are cheering against this working class hero, and that would be a hard feat to pull off for anybody.
