Pavlik says he might come out of retirement to fight

By Boxing News - 01/21/2013 - Comments

pavlik34By Allan Fox: You knew it was probably not going to be a permanent retirement when former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (40-2, 34 KO’s) told ESPN recently that he was hanging up the gloves to protect his heath. It didn’t take too long for Pavlik to start having second thoughts about his retirement, as he’s now saying to RingTV that there’s a 5% chance he’ll fight again if a big fight is offered to him, but short of that then he’ll stay retired.

The chances of Pavlik being offered a big fight will drop dramatically if he doesn’t get anything offered to him in the next 12 months. The problem for Pavlik is he’s already missed so much time in the past three years due to a staph infection on his right hand and due to his alcohol related problems.

It’s like Pavlik has been retired since he’s been out of the loop in terms of facing world class opposition. It’s been three years already since Pavlik fought anyone that you can call a good fighter, and that obviously has hurt his popularity because he’s been forgotten by a lot of boxing fans with him not fighting on the major television cable networks like HBO and Showtime.

If one of the top middleweights or super middleweights decides their hard up for an opponent, then you can bet Pavlik will be given an offer. It’s just unclear what kind of payday Pavlik would be expecting to be lured back in the game. You would have to expect that it would need to be at least $1 million as a starting point.

That might be a possibility if one of the super middleweights like Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler or Arthur Abraham needed an opponent with a name, but I don’t know that those guys would want to fight Pavlik all that badly due to him no longer being a relevant fighter because of his inactivity.

Retirement doesn’t mean a lot in boxing anymore. When a fighter says they’re retiring nowadays it often means they’re just taking a vacation for a while.



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