Pavlik-Lockett: Is Kelly Primed For An Upset?

By Boxing News - 04/02/2008 - Comments

By Aaron Klein: Undefeated WBO/WBC middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (33-0, 29 KOs) will be making his first title defense on June 7th against once-beaten knockout artist Gary Lockett (30-1, 21 KOs) at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Pavlik, 25, has been building Lockett up, saying that he’s got power and is capable of winning the fight. Indeed, I’m in full agreement with Pavlik in that after having seen several of Lockett’s fights recently.

Based on those fights alone, I’d say that Lockett has an excellent chance at pulling off an upset over Pavlik. Lockett has very heavy hands and is capable of knocking out an opponent with either hand, although he doesn’t have true one-punch knockout power like, say, Edison Miranda, but he appears to punch just as hard as him.

What he seems to be missing is hand speed, as most of his punches are thrown rather slowly and are easily seen. However, when his punches land they’re like a sledgehammer, reminding me a lot of a young George Foreman. In the fights I’ve seen of him, his opponents generally run from him after tasting his power early on, which would explain why he doesn’t have as high a knockout percentage as Pavlik. In terms of power, I’d place Lockett as a little above Pavlik in overall power. Whereas Pavlik has to wind up to produce his power, Lockett can produce the same power with shorter shots, not needing to wind up like Pavlik. Lockett hits with the same crushing power every time he throws a punch, making him very dangerous to trade shots with.

Like I said, most of his opponents don’t even try to trade with him, instead opting to stay away from him as much as possible. Pavlik, however, will clearly be the exception to the rule as he always comes directly at his opponents trying to take them with every shot he throws. This I feel will be a big mistake for Pavlik, because he will be fighting Lockett’s kind of fight and will no doubt he getting hit with a large amount of power shots.

This means that whoever has the better chin, perhaps Lockett, will come out on top in the fight. This is the problem with Pavlik’s aggressive style of fighting. When a fighter depends on that style of fighting, sooner or later they’re going to run into an opponent that can hit just as hard as them and then it comes down to whichever fighter has the better chin. In picking Lockett as an opponent, I believe that Pavlik has found the exact wrong type of opponent for his style. Like Joe Frazier and George Foreman, Joe went up against a fighter that was all wrong for his style and ended up decimating him in two rounds.

The same perhaps may go for Pavlik, who be facing a fighter with power greater or equal to his own. Lockett, 31, hasn’t learned how to lose yet. Indeed, he’s only lost once in his career and that was on a split decision to Yuri Tsarenko back in 2002. This was early in Lockett’s career and he has since improved ten fold since that time. He also avenged his defeat to Tsarenko, beating him by a 10-round unanimous decision in 2003.

Since that time, Lockett has won his last eleven fights, seven of them by knockout. Along the way, he’s won the WBU middleweight title and has moved up the rankings. Unfortunately for him, he’s fought mostly in Wales against British fighters of a lower quality than in the U.S. However, his power is very real and can’t be denied no matter who he has fought.



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