By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum and HBO are both interested in matching former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-2, 32 KO’s) against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute (26-0, 21 KO’s) in the near future. This is a fight that boxing fans would no doubt like to see because of Pavlik’s big power and the outstanding boxing skill that Bute possesses. This might be another bad match-up for Pavlik, who is coming off a 12 round unanimous decision defeat at the hands of Sergio Martinez last month on April 17th. Bute is even bigger, more powerful and perhaps even harder to hit compared to Martinez.

I think this is a non-winnable fight for the slow-moving, slow-punching Pavlik and I just don’t see it turning out good for Pavlik. We already saw what happens with Pavlik when he’s put in with a fighter that can move a little and who has fast hand speed in his losses to Bernard Hopkins and Martinez. Bute would be more of the same, only maybe a little better. He’s not unbeatable, because I think he should have been knocked out in the 12th round in his fight with Librado Andrade in 2008.

But Pavlik would have to keep coming forward all night long, putting constant pressure on Bute and taking a ton of punishment in order to wear him down enough to stop him. Andrade was able to do it in their first fight, but he’s also a better pressure fighter than Pavlik and better on his feet. Pavlik is more of a stationary fighter who well against fighters that just stand in front of him trying to slug with him. He’s not good at moving around the ring and not skilled at cutting off the ring.

He would have to cut off the ring against Bute, because otherwise he would have Bute literally boxing circles around him all night long. Bute is very susceptible against big punchers, but you have to be able to take his own big shots in order to get to him. And Bute appears to be getting more powerful as he matures. In his last fight, he took out Edison Miranda in the 3rd round with a huge uppercut. Bute also stopped the normally durable Andrade in the 4th round in their rematch in November last year.

If anything, Bute is becoming an even more dangerous puncher than he was earlier in his career. And at the same time, he remains someone that is very hard to hit because of his ability to retreat away from danger. He likes to hit and then move away. I see this going really badly for Pavlik if he does end up fighting Bute. I don’t know if he really wants this fight. I would hope that he could see what I could see and would opt to take on a lesser fighter while he gets used to fighting at a higher weight. Pavlik needs to get adapted to fighting super middleweights after having fought his entire career at 160.