By Scott Gilfoid: This Saturday Welsh fighter Gary Lockett (30-1, 21 KOs) will be in the toughest fight of his career when he goes up against WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (33-0, 29 KOs) in a title fight at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Nothing on Lockett’s career record would appear to suggest that he’ll do anything other than losing badly to the 26 year-old Pavlik, who is not only more powerful but has also faced the much stiffer competition. Lockett’s trainer Enzo Calzaghe would have you believe otherwise, saying repeatedly this week that Lockett will shock the world when he pulls and upset over Pavlik.
However, Enzo Calzaghe isn’t the one that has to go out and fight Pavlik, and no matter how many times he says that Lockett has the ability to win, there’s few people buying into his bold talk. Lockett, 31, has reportedly been sparring often with his stable mate Enzo Maccarinelli, a cruiserweight, in hopes that this will prepare Lockett for the big shots coming in at him from Pavlik this Saturday. However, Maccarinelli, a decent puncher in his own right, has nothing close to the same power as Pavlik. That’s no put down of Maccarinelli, don’t get me wrong, because he’s got good power, yet Pavlik is in a league of his own in that department. In theory, I can see it being a good thing that Lockett has chosen to spar with Maccarinelli, but in reality it’s probably a big waste of time.
Instead of training with Maccarinelli, Lockett needs to be working on his rather poor boxing skills, for he has essentially none to speak of. His fights are often predictable, with him coming out and plodding right after his opponent, standing flat-footed winging big shots at equally stationary targets in the same mold as him. As you would guess, pretty much every opponent Lockett has faced has been a C-class fighter or worse. And, in the one instance that he fought a decent C-level fighter with any kind of movement, Yuri Tsarenko, Lockett quite naturally lost. He did get revenge a year later, in March 2003, but even then it was incredibly close, not a fight where Lockett had showed any improvement over his previous loss to Tsarenko.
Obviously, Lockett won’t have to worry about things like movement from Pavlik, as he’s clearly going to come right after Lockett and try to take him out as fast possible. However, the lack of experience against quality opposition for Lockett will likely be readily apparent from the opening moments of the fight. His record looks good on paper, at 30-1, but there’s not substance among all the names, like he just took on a bunch of no-named fighters to build up a good looking resume. I suppose it’s worked for him, since Pavlik has indeed chosen him as an opponent, but as far as Lockett having a chance at winning on Saturday, it’s almost next impossible.
He does have a chance, naturally, but only if he swings for the fences with every shot and gets lucky with Pavlik dropping his guard. I doubt it’ll happen, but it’s the only chance a guy like Lockett has. Perhaps if Lockett had a little more in the way of boxing skills, he might be able to take the fight deep, and possibly have a shot – a weak one, mind you – at scoring a knockout if he were able to suddenly start opening up with big shots. Lockett, though, has shown to have little boxing ability, and at this stage in his career it would be remarkable to see him suddenly show something different.