by Jim Dower: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (37-2, 32 KO’s) will be getting back in action on March 31st in San Antonio, Texas against an opponent still to be determined. Pavlik, 29, needs to win this fight and perhaps one more tune-up in order to get a fight against WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. It’s a big IF as far as the Chavez Jr. fight does, however, because Chavez Jr. may end up facing Sergio Martinez in September according to Chavez Sr’s twitter messages to Martinez.

Chavez Jr. obviously will get beaten quite badly if he faces Martinez, so there’s a better than average chance that Pavlik still won’t get the Chavez Jr. fight unless it’s a fight without a title at stake with Chavez Jr. coming off of a knockout loss. That doesn’t sound realistic, though, and more than likely Pavlik will never get the shot at Chavez Jr. unless the WBC allows Chavez Jr. to put Martinez on ignore for the rest of the year.

Pavlik’s last fight was a year ago against Alfonso Lopez, a fringe super middleweight contender. Pavlik made Lopez look a lot better than he is by struggling with his movement and boxing ability. Pavlik looked out of his element, but he was given the benefit of some very kind scoring by two of the judges who scored it 98-92 and 99-91 for Pavlik. I had the fight a draw, which was the same scored one of the judges had it with a 95-95. Pavlik could be coming back to the middleweight division for this fight because he started training camp at 170. That’s a weight where Pavlik could already make at 160 with ease, so we might see Pavlik pace at 160. At that weight, Pavlik, 6’2″, is very hard to beat because of his power and size. His problem is he came in heavy for his loss to Sergio Martinez and had to take off a lot of water weight before the fight. In Pavlik ‘s loss to Bernard Hopkins in 2008, Pavlik agreed to a 170 pound catchweight and it hurt him because he wasn’t nearly as strong at that weight compared to at 160.