By Allan Fox: Top Rank has put together a nice little card headlined by WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire 28-1, 18 KO’s) battling IBF 122 pound champion Jeffrey Mathebula (26-3-2, 14 KO’s) on July 7th at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. The card will be televised by HBO.

Along with the Donaire-Mathebula fight, boxing fans will get to see former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (39-2, 34 Ko’s) trying to pick up the broken pieces of his once promising career in a 10 round bout against prospect Will Rosinksy (16-1, 9 KO’s). It’s kind of a do or die type fight for the 30-year-old Pavlik, because if he loses this fight, he’s going to facing an all but impossible hole that he’ll try and dig himself out of. Pavlik still has good power, but his plodding style of fighting is an old style that won’t work against the more advanced fighters in the super middleweight division nowadays. If this was 10 years ago when the 168 pound division was one of the weakest in all of boxing, Pavlik would dominate most of the fighters at that with ease, but not anymore. The best that we can probably hope for with Pavlik is to get one or two big fights and lose them.

Another fight on the card will be unbeaten junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan (32-0, 20 Ko’s) fighting journeyman Ryan Davis (24-9-3, 9 KO’s) in a 10 round bout. The Freddie Roach trained Martiroysan, #2 WBO, #4 WBC, #8 IBF, has turned down offers for important fights against Erislandy Lara and Alfredo Angulo in order to keep fighting journeyman from then 2nd tier.

It looks like Martirosyan or his handlers don’t want to put him in any risky fights until he gets a title shot against, perhaps one of the weaker beatable 154 pound champions. No doubt Martirosyan would take a fight against WBA champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. if he could get it, but he won’t get it because Martirosyan has been risk aversive in his career and hasn’t built up his name.