Loew: The snap is back in Pavlik’s punches

By Eric Thomas: Jack Leow, the trainer for former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-2, 32 KO’s), likes what he sees of Pavlik’s punching power, endurance and moves in his training camp for his upcoming May 7th bout against Alfonso Lopez (21-0, 16 KO’s) on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Shane Mosley bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pavlik, 29, hasn’t fought since losing a 12 round unanimous decision to Sergio Martinez last year in April 2010. Pavlik has been in and out of alcohol rehabilitation since then and has gotten his life back together.

Pavlik won’t be fighting at middleweight because of how difficult it is for him to make the weight at this point in his career. Pavlik will be now fighting at 168 lbs in the super middleweight division and perhaps that is one of the reasons why Pavlik has so much energy in training camp. He’s not had to cut weight this training camp like he’s done in the past and it’s given him more energy.

Speaking with vindy.com, Leow had this to say about Pavlik: “That’s what I haven’t seen — the snap on his right hand. He’s putting three, four, five punches together instead of just that big one-two. I think he’s got everything back that we had before. The snap, the stamina, his moves, his endurance. It’s all there.”

Pavlik is making a big career move by taking the risk of moving up in weight to super middleweight because there are a number of fighters in that division that are capable of out-boxing him in the same way that Bernard Hopkins and Martinez did. Pavlik would likely have problems with guys like Andre Ward, Lucian Bute, Mikkel Kessler and possibly Andre Dirrell. This is going to be a big test for Pavlik, because he could end up failing miserably at this weight like Arthur Abraham, a former IBF middleweight champion who moved up to super middleweight and has been having problems at this weight due to the bigger fighters out-boxing him.

Pavlik should start off on the right foot with an easy win over the little known Lopez next month. Pavlik is much more experienced than Lopez and this should be a huge mismatch. But moving forward, Pavlik is going to have to throw more combinations if he wants to beat the better fighters in the division. He can’t depend on his old 1-2 combination to win his fights because he’s become too predictable as the better fighters know what’s coming from him. It’s nice to hear that Pavlik is throwing four and five punch combinations in training but until he’s able to throw combinations like that in an actual fight, it means little.

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