Pavlik stops Espino, looks horrible

By Dave Lahr: I bet Paul Williams is licking his chops right about now after seeing WBC/WBO Kelly Pavlik’s (36-1, 32 KO’s) sloppy fight against Miguel Espino (20-3-1, 9 KO’s) on Saturday night in Youngstown, Ohio. Pavlk stopped Espino in the 5th round, but man did Pavlik take a lot of head shots in winning the fight. Pavlik showed zero ability to defend from punches thrown his way, spending the better part of the fight standing at close range with Espino slinging power shots.

Espino fired back with his own punches matching Pavlik shot for shot through much of the fight. Pavlik had the harder punches and ended up putting Espino down twice with uppercuts in the 4th round. Espino was badly hurt from the first knockdown, and it was a surprise that he actually made it to his feet after getting hit with the shot. However, instead of playing it safe after getting up and staying on the outside to try and clear his head, Espino went after Pavlik as if he was the one that was hurt.

Espino must have been thinking that he’d get an edge somehow by going after Pavlik, because I can’t understand it at all. If his goal was to get knocked out, then I can understand Espino coming after Pavlik after getting nailed. Whatever the case, it didn’t pay off well for Espino, as he was quickly dropped a second time in the round.

In the 5th round, Espino went after Pavlik immediately, firing off punches and looking as if he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. Pavlik took full advantage of Espino’s wild attack by hammering him with a series of hard uppercuts to the head that sent Espino down. His corner threw in the towel to have the fight stopped. The official time of the stoppage was 1:44 of the 5th.

It was great that Pavlik could hold onto his titles after being out of action for 10 months, but he didn’t look at all good against a weak opponent. Pavlik took way too many head shots, which is pretty typical for him, but it’s not a good thing when you think about him fighting better fighters like Paul Williams or Sergio Martinez. The way that Pavlik look last night, I would give Williams and Martinez and excellent chance of beating him. Pavlik is just too wide open defensively and doesn’t have the movement to beat better fighters. Bernard Hopkins already exposed Pavlik last year by dominating him in a 12 round win. I see the same thing happening with Williams, who by the way, Pavlik said that he was interested in fighting in 2010.

I think Pavlik needs to come down from his cloud, sit down, watch the fight and rethink the idea of fighting Williams. I think Pavlik would get a major boxing lesson if he fights Williams anytime soon. Pavlik is too slow and one-dimensional to beat a talented fighter like Williams. The kind of fighters that Pavlik does good against are the Espino types. In other words, slow plodders who stand right in front of him all night long trying to slug it out.

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