Pavlik-Calzaghe In November? Don’t Count Out Jones Jr.

By Boxing News - 05/29/2008 - Comments

calzaghe4545464.jpgBy Jason Kim: In the latest boxing news, yesterday it was learned that WBO/WBC middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s promoter Bob Arum was in early meeting with Frank Warren, the promoter of undefeated WBC/WBO super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe for a potential bout in November. The bout, if it were to be made between the two fighters, would be at 168 lbs, making it easy for the 36 year-old Calzaghe to make the fight without having to strip off weight. After all, it’s Calzaghe who is the much more popular fighter at this stage of his career, and because if that, he’s able to make the demands.

Pavlik, though, is perfectly okay with righting at 168, as his normal walking around weight is above that, and regularly has to take off weight to in order to make the 160 lb middleweight limit. As much as Arum would like to see Pavlik be Calzaghe’s next opponent in November, we still may very likely see Calzaghe vs. Roy Jones Jr., for whom Calzaghe was originally negotiating for a bout. Recently, however, the talks have reportedly stalled over money issues, with Jones always a tough to negotiate with when it comes to important fights, apparently wants more money than what’s being offered to him.

From Jones’ perspective, it’s hard to blame him because he probably is wise enough to understand that he has a very little chance of beating Calzaghe, and he would be a fool if he didn’t want to be well paid for this eventuality. Unless I miss my guess, Calzaghe would much prefer to take the fight with Jones, a fighter with little threat to win due to his badly fading skills, rather than fighting the young and powerful knockout artist Pavlik. If push comes to shove, I believe that Calzaghe will take the fight with Pavlik, if that’s all that’s out there, but that will only occur after his management team has exhausted every effort at bringing in Jones at a lesser price.

After Calzaghe’s close call with Bernard Hopkins, a narrow 12-round split decision win for Calzaghe, in April, I doubt seriously that he wants another tough bout with a fighter with even more power and a much better work rate than Hopkins. Barring a knockout, that’s a fight that this version of Calzaghe probably can’t win. With Jones, however, Calzaghe gets an old champion who still has a huge amount of fans, many who would be keen on watching the fight despite Jones’ fading ability. To be sure, that’s a fight that Calzaghe would have almost no problems whatsoever winning. Calzaghe, unfortunately for him, doesn’t have a lot of other options available for him other than Jones and Pavlik in terms of big money fights.

Most of the other super middleweights aren’t well known to the public, aside from a few of minor stars like Edison Miranda, Allan Green and Carl Froch. Most of them would be more problems than Calzaghe needs at this point, and it wouldn’t be a fight that he could sell to the larger public. The light heavyweight division, too, is also devoid of popular fighters, other than Hopkins, with only a couple of stars like Chad Dawson and Antonio Tarver. A bout with Tarver would be somewhat interesting, except for the fact that he was soundly beaten by Hopkins not too long ago in 2006, which took a lot of the glamor off of Tarver’s status.

Of the middleweights, there’s only Pavlik, Arthur Abraham and Winky Wright, yet only Pavlik seems to be able to draw in large amounts of fans. Abraham, a German-based fighter, is still largely unknown to most Americans, making him a non-viable opponent. As I said, Calzaghe doesn’t have a whole lot of options for what he’s looking for – a big money bout against a top fighter. If he’s smart, he’ll find away to make the fight with Jones.

At least by doing that, he’ll still have the option of fighting Pavlik later on down the line. However, if he fights Pavlik instead, Calzaghe may end up with no future options for a bout against Jones, because he’ll likely lose to Pavlik. To me, this is a no brainer; Calzaghe has little choice but to fight Jones.