By Jason Kim: Kelly Pavlik (35-1, 31 KOs) showed no ill effects from his 12-round defeat to Bernard Hopkins on Saturday night, whipping an outgunned Marco Antonio Rubio (43-5-1, 37 KOs) by a 9th round stoppage at the Chevrolet Centre, in Youngstown, Ohio. Pavlik dismantled Rubio with heavy shots in the 8th and 9th rounds, leading to Marco quitting at the end of the 9th. Rubio, a hard hitter, was thought to be someone that would give Pavlik a reasonably tough fight.
Instead, however, he gave Pavlik no resistance at all, just taking shots without throwing much of anything back at him. Having struggled for nine years as a pro, it was baffling that Rubio was willing to fold so easily without at least giving Pavlik a tough challenge. If not for yourself, then at least for the many fans that had paid to see the fight. Rubio did himself no favors by fighting so passively, and essentially gave the fight away to Pavlik by default.
Pavlik showed his old right hand power through the fight, tagging Rubio with big shots in each round. It wasn’t the aggressive Pavlik that many of us were accustomed to seeing before his loss to Hopkins, because he looked much more reserved than he was in the past.
Kelly seemed to put more emphasis on landing his jab rather than trying to club Rubio into submission. Pavlik’s jab kept Rubio stuck on the outside unable to land any significant blows. Though I doubt that Rubio would have tried even if Pavlik wasn’t throwing anything, because he looked like he was afraid to get hit and wanted to survive.
After the fight, Pavlik was overjoyed with his success , appearing to believe that he’s recovered from his disappointing loss to Hopkins and has come back to where he was before his loss to him. That may be, but we probably won’t know that until Pavlik fights someone a lot better than Rubio. Once he mixes it up with a fighter like Arthur Abraham, the IBF middleweight champion, we could find out if Pavlik is back or not.
We may not see that fight taking place anytime soon, though, because it looks as if John Duddy, the number #2 ranked contender in the WBO may be next up for Pavlik. What makes Duddy look so good is his 26-0 record, which gives him instant credibility with a small segment of boxing fans that know little about the sport.
Seeing a record like Duddy will impress the casual fans that are unaware that most of the wins have come over easy opposition. However, Pavlik will probably end up beating Duddy just as easy as he beat Rubio on Saturday night.
And that’s disappointing, because Pavlik has so few opponents in the middleweight division that can really give him any kind of test. Other Duddy and Abraham, there are few appealing options in the middleweight division. Most of the middleweight contenders in the WBC and WBO are barely recognizable Europeans.
Frankly, not one of them would be worth fighting, because Pavlik will get little credit for fighting them nor will he get a big payday against them. It may very well be that unless he can fight someone like Paul Williams, Winky Wright, Mikkel Kessler, Carl Froch or Lucian Bute, there’s few other fighters for him to mix it up with. The middleweight division is barren of talent as of now, and there’s almost no chance of a big fight unless Pavlik can fight Abraham or Sturm.