By Dan Ambrose: Kelly Pavlik hopes to erase doubt about him when he finally renews his career on Saturday night against little known opponent Aaron Jaco (15-2, 5 KO’s) in a 10 round bout in San Antonio, Texas. Pavlik hasn’t impressed him ages and has looked like a shadow of his former self in struggling against Sergio Martinez to a 12 round decision loss in 2010 and then barely getting by fringe contender Alfonso Lopez last year in May in a fight that Pavlik should have easily won.

Pavlik has quit drinking alcohol and turned his thoughts to making the most out of his career. He’s with new Robert Garcia in Oxnard, California and trying to change his game around completely. We’ll likely see some of those changes in his game tomorrow night, such as his counter punching. However, Jaco probably won’t be around long enough for boxing fans to see the full facets of Pavlik’s game. He’ll need a better opponent than this to show what he’s really learned. It might take a while because his promoter Bob Arum has ideas of matching Pavlik soft three more times in 2013 to get him ready for an all Top Rank fight between Pavlik and WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in 2013.

Pavlik needs to add more punch variety to his game tomorrow night against Jaco. Pavlik is too predictable with his double and triple jab followed by a 1-2 combination. With his last trainer, that’s how Pavlik went about beating his opposition. It worked good for the most part due to the middleweight division going through an extremely weak period during Pavlik’s time at the top. But Bernard Hopkins and Martinez really exposed Pavlik’s lack of skills in beating him. It’s hard to say how much new trainer Garcia can teach Pavlik because his old style is so much drummed into his head. It’ll be hard to un-learn all the bad habits Pavlik had with his past trainer.