By Michael Liberman: If you’re like me, you’re hoping that this Saturday’s bout between WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (33-0, 29 KOs) and Gary Lockett (30-1, 21 KOs) is the last of its kind for Pavlik, because this fight isn’t bringing any kind of suspense or drama to the expectations of most boxing fans. Pavlik 26, was looking previously at a good payday against a John Duddy, an unbeaten Irish middleweight who’s popular on the East coast, but that fight fell through when Duddy took a brutal pounding in a tune-up fight and received multiple cuts over both eyes.

Without much time to seek a popular alternative fighter, Pavlik was left facing the Lockett, a 31 year-old fighter from Wales, who has drifted through a 12-year professional boxing career without having faced one credible opponent until now. Lockett’s record, a fine 30-1, would have you believe that he’s one of the top middleweights in the sport, perhaps good enough to defeat Pavlik even. However, as the saying goes, “all that glitters isn’t gold,” and in Lockett’s case he’s more of a case of fool’s gold than the real genuine article.

Of the fights I’ve seen him in, he’s looked plainly mediocre, nothing like a top 20 fighter, though incredible, he’s ranked #15 in the WBC. I’m not sure how or why that slip up was made, because Lockett belongs closer to the bottom 100 than the top 15 of any alphabet ranking group, from what I’ve seen of him.

After this fight is out of the way, and Pavlik gets his quick knockout win, I’m really hoping that he steps it up against a good fighter, preferably someone like IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham, Felix Sturm, Lucian Bute, Mikkel Kessler or Joe Calzage. The ideal opponent, of course, would be Calzaghe, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that fight happening. Calzaghe looks to be more interested in getting out of boxing with his unblemished record intact, and wouldn’t want to risk that against a hard puncher like Pavlik.

Calzaghe will continue to look elsewhere, and probably will settle on Roy Jones Jr. instead of Pavlik. Besides Kessler, Abraham, Sturm and Bute, there’s always Duddy, who badly wants a shot against Pavlik. Why? I have no idea. Considering how badly Duddy was beaten to a pulp by the journeyman Walid Smichet in February, it would likely be a horrible slaughter with Pavlik wiping the deck with Duddy, turning his face into a bloody mess in no time. If the fight against Calzaghe fails to come off, that’s the likely scenario that will be seeing in the future for Pavlik.

As much as I’d like to see him go against a better class of fighter, like one of the aforementioned boxers, Pavlik will probably continue to pursue big money fights against lesser fighters, though not in the lower class of someone like Lockett, thankfully. However, if Pavlik is concerned about his legacy in the sport of boxing, he needs to remained focused on taking the bigger fights against the tougher opponents and ignore the big money for the time being. It will come eventually as he builds a name for himself by defeating the better fighters, but if he sells out by taking the easy fights, I think he’ll be doing himself a great disserve in the process.