Can Pavlik Win a 12-round Boxing Match With Calzaghe?

By Sean McDaniel: While I was watching undefeated WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (34-0, 30 KOs) dispatch his latest challenger Gary Lockett in the 3rd round on Saturday night, I noticed that Pavlik seemed to lacking in both speed and boxing skills in the fight, something that would likely be exposed if he were to step it up a couple of notches against a much better fighter than Lockett. This in fact might be about to happen, as Pavlik has been pressing hard for a bout against the undefeated super middleweight champion from Wales Joe Calzaghe (45-0, 32 KOs). As of now, nothing has been ironed out between Calzaghe’s promoter Frank Warren and the promoter of Pavlik, Bob Arum, but both parties on working hard at trying to come to an agreement that would be suitable to both fighters.

Pavlik, as good as he looked against a very limited Lockett on Saturday night, has no idea what he’s about to be getting himself into by facing Calzaghe. In watching Pavlik, he has none of the boxing skills of a fighter like super middleweight Mikkel Kessler or even someone like light heavweight Bernard Hopkins, arguably the two toughest opponents of Calzaghe’s long 15-year boxing career.

That’s not to say that Pavlik isn’t on par with either of them, because he certainly is due to his massive power, yet he doesn’t seem to have the boxing ability needed to grind out a 12-round decision over a boxer-puncher like Calzaghe. I see Pavlik as either winning by a knockout or losing by a 12-round decision to Calzaghe.

To me, that fight was very telling about Pavlik’s ability to win a fight by a decision rather than a plain knockout, which he’s done in the vast majority of his fights, winning 30 of 34 fights by knockout. When you win like that it’s a plus, that’s for certain, for you don’t have to take as many damaging punches to the head and experience the wear and tear that goes along with it. On the flip side, however, when a fighter like Pavlik becomes dependent on early knockout victories, they don’t learn properly how to box, to dig deep late in the fight to pull out a close fight, and most importantly they don’t learn how to win by a decision.

Believe me, there’s a strategy to it, some of it consisting of pacing, planning, endurance and fighting smart. Pavlik, with all his knockouts coming in rounds one-six, he might find himself in an uncomfortable situation - one that he’s not accustomed to dealing with - if he were suddenly to find himself having to compete against a fighter like Calzaghe who refused to go down. What would Pavlik do in that situation? He certainly couldn’t count on landing the old 1-2 late in the fight, hoping to catch Calzaghe standing right in front of him, because Calzaghe is a defensive fighter, who tends to make his opponents miss. Pavlik tends to hold his power well late in the fight, yet Calzaghe retains his speed to the very end, and wouldn’t be there for Pavlik. For Pavlik’s part, he’s become accustomed to fighting big punchers in the last couple of years, taking on Jermain Taylor, Edison Miranda, Lockett, Jose Luis Zertuche and Fulgencio Zuniga, fighters which have suited Pavlik’s straight ahead slugging style.

Calzaghe, on the other hand, is the opposite of them. He uses constant side to side, in and out movement, along with blazing fast combinations to confound his opponents. Additionally, many of Calzaghe’s punches come from weird angles and he rarely repeats the same type of punch, which keeps his opponents constantly guessing and unable to predict a pattern with him. This, I’m afraid to say, will be a big problem for Pavlik who will be quite uncomfortable with Calzaghe’s style of fighting (why shouldn’t he be? He’s never faced anyone remotely close to Calzaghe before) and won’t know how to adapt to a style that he was never trained on to begin with.

It’s easier for a boxer to become a puncher than it is a puncher to become a boxer, believe me. The latter requires years of training and a certain God-given ability. In other words, you either haven’t or you don’t, and it’s certainly not something that you can attain in four months of hard training before a big fight, especially if you’re fighting someone like Calzaghe, who is considered perhaps one of the best boxers of all time in the super middleweight division. For that reason, I think Pavlik will lose and lose big to Calzaghe. Pavlik is too slow and far too predictable to take Calzaghe out with his straight ahead style of fighting, and he won’t have the skills to win by a decision over Calzaghe.