Pavlik-Mora: Another Dull Opponent For Kelly

By Chris Williams: When Kelly Pavlik (35-1, 31 KOs) defeated middleweight champion Jermain Taylor in September 2007 to capture the WBO/WBC middleweight titles, I had hopes that Pavlik would be a champion that was interested in fighting the most exciting fights available. But, instead we’ve seen almost the opposite with Pavlik fighting Gary Lockett and Marco Antonio Rubio, sandwiched between his fight with Bernard Hopkins which saw Pavlik getting thoroughly beaten by the 43-year-old Hopkins.

Now, to make things even worse, Pavlik, 27, will be fighting Sergio Mora (21-1-1, 5 KOs) on June 27th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Frankly, I can’t see the appeal of Mora as an opponent. This fight reminds me of Ricky Hatton’s recent choice of Paulie Malignaggi as an opponent rather than tougher fighters like Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt, Ricardo Torres or Victor Ortiz.

How Pavlik could have selected Mora is beyond me. Usually champions don’t choose to defend their titles against an opponent that was beaten in their last bout, but in this case that’s exactly what’s happening. Mora, the former World Boxing Council light middleweight champion, lost his title in a one-sided loss to Vernon Forrest in September 2008.

The fight was never close as Forrest dominated Mora with jabs, hooks and big power shots to the head. Mora had defeated Forrest by a 12-round majority decision three months earlier in June 2008 to capture Forrest’s WBC title. However, even with Forrest badly out of shape for that fight and totally under-motivated, Mora was still barely able to capture the title against the 37-year-old.

Now, having been beaten back into obscurity, Mora is being given another shot at a title against Pavlik. It’s sad and baffling that Pavlik would choose Mora over number #5 ranked WBC contender Gennady Golovkin or number #2 ranked WBO middleweight contender John Duddy. At least neither of these contenders has been beaten yet, and with Golovkin I don’t that there is anyone in the division that can beat him period. He’s clearly a level above Mora.

I can see why Mora was chosen, however. He’s somewhat popular in the Los Angeles area because of him having won The Contender five long years ago in 2004. That was a long time ago, and the memory of his victory on that show has probably long faded from most fans.

I saw the show years ago and my memory of the bouts was that the fighters didn’t look world class. I wasn’t surprised that Mora won it, but he barely did it and I was bored by his performances against Najai Turpin, Ishe Smith and Jesse Brinkley. He got the wins but didn’t impress me with his low guard, and slick way of fighting. It looked like a badly watered down version of Roy Jones Jr. without his power and speed.

If Pavlik wanted a stay busy fight, he should have chosen someone who’s on a winning streak like Golovkin, Duddy, or Sebastian Zbik instead. By taking on Mora it only feeds the perception that some boxing fans have about Pavlik that he’s trying to milk his title for as long as he can in order to try and prevent from getting beaten again.

The fight that people want to see is Pavlik vs. Arthur Abraham, the IBF middleweight champion. However, that doesn’t look like it will be happening soon. Abraham has a fight with Giovanni Lorenzo on June 27th, and after that it’s unknown what will happen.

Abraham has said that he’s sticking around the middleweight division in order to fight a unification bout with Pavlik. As soon as that fights out of the way, Abraham plans on moving up in weight to the super middleweight division because he can no longer make the middleweight 160 pound weight limit without shedding a ton of weight before the fight.

This is some good news potentially because if the two sides can come together, we may be seeing Pavlik vs. Abraham either late this year or sometime in early 2010.

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