Is Kessler The New Pavlik?

By Manuel Perez: Nearly two weeks ago, Kelly Pavlik (34-1, 30 KOs), who was then undefeated and considered by many to be one of the top fighters in all of boxing, was trounced by Bernard Hopkins in one of the most one-sided fights between top fighters in some time. The outcome stripped away the aura of invincibility from Pavlik while at the same time appearing to strip away many of his legions of fans in the process. Without a place to turn their attention, many of Pavlik’s fans – judging from the ring talk on internet boxing forums – have turned their attention to Mikkel Kessler (41-1, 31 KOs), the WBA super middleweight champion who comes from Denmark.

Although Kessler isn’t undefeated like say Joe Calzaghe, he has only one loss, a unanimous decision defeat to Calzaghe in 2007, but in Kessler’s case, he fought well in losing, and made it gave Calzaghe perhaps his toughest fight of his career. The same can’t be said for Pavlik, who looked badly outclassed by the 43 year-old Hopkins in a way that suggest that Pavlik would never be good enough to defeat a fighter like him no matter how much work he put into it. Seeing Pavlik humbled in such a way, has had to have been a crushing blow to many of his boxing fans who identified with him and his blue collar worth ethic.

You can imagine what they must be feeling seeing him getting punched around by Hopkins all night long, getting his nose bloodied, his face battered and swollen, looking like an amateur for the most part. Since that tragic night, the hoopla about Pavlik, which had previously been almost deafening, has died down and withered away to close to nothing. In its place, there has been seen a new surge of interest in Kessler by many of the very fans that were previously worshiping at the idol of Pavlik.

Quite frankly, it’s amusing for me to see this because I always considered Pavlik to be a very limited fighter, one who had built up a lot of hype from a few wins over decent fighters. I could see that his approach to fighting in which he was fought in a forward direction, slowly plodding, showing little lateral movement, was doomed for failure as soon as he met up with a fighter like Hopkins who had good boxing skills and a good chin to match. I never thought that it would be Hopkins who exposes him like this, but I wasn’t all that surprised either.

For the fans that have abandoned Pavlik the less damaged Kessler, I think they’ll be disappointed in him too before long. Kessler has done well for most of his career, and shown some good ability in terms of power, movement, defense and an excellent jab to go with them, but he’s not in the class of fighters like Hopkins or Chad Dawson, and many others and I see him losing again in the near future when he steps it up against good fighters.

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