By Jason Kim: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s career has been pretty much in a serious stall since losing his titles two years ago in a 12 round decision loss to Sergio Martinez in 2010. Pavlik’s Top Rank promoters are reportedly in negotiations with WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward’s promoters to set up a fight between them, possibly by the end of the year. If this fight comes off to fruition, we could see Pavlik suffer the worst defeat of his career, far worse than his beating he took against Bernard Hopkins or his loss to Sergio Martinez.

Pavlik has been in and out of a alcohol treatment center but his career has failed to restart due to long periods in between fights and his failure to start fighting quality fighters again. It’s almost like Pavlik has restarted his career with him facing Alfonso Lopez, Aaron Jaco, Scott Sigmon and Will Rosinksy in his last four fights.

Pavlik can’t fight at middleweight any longer because he can no longer make weight for the division. Fighting at middleweight gave Pavlik a big advantage because he was so much bigger than his competition, both in height and in weight. Pavlik would rehydrate up and he was a menace for anyone in the division. However, with Pavlik now fighting at super middleweight, he’s just another fighter and it’s quite possible that he’ll never win another title if he stays at this weight.

He’s not going to be able to compete against Ward, and that’s going to be clear right from the start. Pavlik seems to be gambling that he could maybe get lucky and stop Ward, because that’s the only logical thing you can think of for why he would be foolish enough to take this fight. Pavlik doesn’t match up with Ward at all. That’s the worst possible fighter Pavlik could be facing after two years away from top level opposition.

The smart thing would be for Pavlik to ease his way back by taking on a mid to bottom level 1st tier contender, but you don’t go straight to the top to fight the best guy in the division like Pavlik’s doing by looking to fight Ward. That’s like setting himself up for failure. I can imagine that Top Rank has tried to talk Pavlik out of doing this, because they must see what I can see that Pavlik doesn’t stand a chance. But the fact that the negotiations are still moving forward suggests that Pavlik really wants this fight and isn’t going to be held back by his promoters. It’s like Pavlik is the captain of a ship and is insisting on steering it into the rocks to see if he can survive. It’s going to end badly for Pavlik. As bad as Chad Dawson looked recently in losing to Ward, I can picture Pavlik looking far, far worse.