By Chris Williams: Last Saturday night, Kelly Pavlik suffered a career debilitating 12-round decision loss to former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Pavlik never stood a chance, as Hopkins used movement, speed, effective counter punching and good inside fighting to get Pavlik out of his game and make him look like a complete novice. Hopkins, 43, hurt Pavlik (34-1, 30 KOs) several times in the bout with big shots and had him in trouble in the 12th and final round after nailing him with a flurry of punches.

The beating, which is essentially what it came down to, left Pavlik a bloody mess, his nose and left eye bleeding and his face reddened from the punches he’d been forced to eat from Hopkins. Afterwards, Pavlik said “I didn’t feel like me tonight. I felt like a sub-novice.” He also mentioned that he’d be moving back down to the middleweight division to defend his WBC title, presumably against his number #1 challenger Marco Antonio Rubio, who also fought on the same card and looked very beatable and mediocre. However, rather than wasting time on fighting dull contenders with little talent, Pavlik needs to train hard and seek out Hopkins (49-5-1, 32 KOs) for a rematch.

Believe me, Pavlik is a much better fighter than he showed on Saturday night, a fighter with great potential to be one of the best middleweights of all time. Obviously, he’s got to go back to the drawing board, maybe get a new trainer, and learn how to deal with fighters like Hopkins that use a lot of lateral movement. However, I think it’s easily achievable, something that Pavlik can do within a very short time if he works hard enough on it.

Up until Saturday, Pavlik had never had to deal with an opponent with any kind of movement, because most of his opponents have been there right in front of him and made it easy for him. Jermain Taylor, whom he twice defeated, used a lot of movement in the second fight, but nothing approaching the kind of lateral movement that Hopkins used against him. With a little work, I think Pavlik can easily fix his problem and be a lot better fighter than he was before. His hand speed, no doubt, will remain a problem for him because he’ll never be a fast-handed fighter, but he can learn to compensate with that by timing his faster opponents better.

Against Hopkins, he showed little ability to cut off the ring, and did a poor job of timing Hopkins when he would come forward to throw his lunging shots. A good fighter like Roy Jones Jr. would have eaten Hopkins up when he came flying in trying to land punches. Pavlik, though, looked like he didn’t have a clue what to do with Hopkins when he would come forward like this.
After a loss like this, Pavlik needs to push as hard as he can for a rematch with Hopkins, because he can’t let this loss go un-avenged.

Not only will the loss continue to taint Pavlik for the remainder of his career with the boxing public, but it will likely take away a lot of his self confidence as well, provided that he doesn’t try to avenge it. Even if he loses a second time, he’d at least tried. However, I think next time he’d win because he’ll know how to handle Hopkins’ tactics. The next fight, though, has to be at 160 rather than 170, because it wasn’t quite fair to Pavlik to have to fight essentially at light heavyweight when he’s more of a natural middleweight.

If Hopkins doesn’t go for that, will then I’d forget about a rematch with him because it’s just not fair to have to fight at that weight, which favors Hopkins too much. Pavlik wasn’t smart for agreeing to fight at 170, and has only himself to blame for doing this. I guess he wanted the money awfully bad, but he should have recognized that coming in at 170 would slow him down, while at the same time give Hopkins, a natural light heavyweight, a tremendous advantage in the fight. If you put Hopkins at Pavlik’s weight, I assure you that the fight would have a much different outcome than what happened on Saturday.

Hopkins said after the fight, “Don’t let this fight destroy you,” trying to make Pavlik feel a little better about him having been beaten so badly. Pavlik, however, should have told him, ‘don’t worry, I’ll take care of you in a rematch.’ Hopkins may have won the battle, but he didn’t win the war. Hopkins doesn’t really have a lot of options other than to face Pavlik in a second fight, because Joe Calzaghe, who beat Hopkins by a controversial decision in April, said yesterday that he wants no part of fighting him again. Hopkins wants to fight the winner of Calzaghe vs. Roy Jones Jr., so that rules out fighting Jones, too, because he probably is going to lose badly to Calzaghe.

That only leaves IBF light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson and Pavlik as potential opponents. Dawson is a bad match-up for Hopkins, because he has fast hands and a busy work rate, and is a much improved version of Jermain Taylor, who twice defeated Hopkins. I doubt seriously that Hopkins will want to face him and lose everything he got from his win over Pavlik. If you strip away Dawson, Calzaghe and Jones, that leaves only Pavlik.