By Scott Gilfoid: Up to now, WBO/WBC middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s (33-0, 29 KOs) upcoming June 7th bout challenger Gary Lockett (30-1, 21 KOs), from Wales, has barely registered a blip on the radar screen with most fans, most of whom could care less watching Pavlik likely destroy the 15th ranked WBC contender Lockett. Few people give the fighter from Wales much of any chance at pulling off the upset over Pavlik, which seems to have had the effect of creating a kind of mosquito repellent for the fans when it comes to discussing this fight.

In fairness to Pavlik, I suppose he was due to for an easy fight sooner or later, having fought a virtual murderer’s row of hard punchers in his last four fights, defeating Jose Luis Zertuche, Edison Miranda and Jermain Taylor twice. Before that, Pavlik had defeated Fulgenico Zuniga in 2005. That said, it’s still not quite appealing to see Pavlik go up against a fighter as green, and with a record as inflated as Lockett’s record. Essentially, Lockett has fought his entire career against C-class fighters, wasting his entire 12 year career fighting nothing but lower level opposition. In a way, he’s like a real life Rocky Balboa, who spends his time fighting mainly bums and then lucks out by getting a title shot against Apollo Creed.

In that respect, Lockett has about the same chance at pulling off an upset as Rocky did in that movie, actually maybe even worse. Though he has very heavy hands and can knock out a fighter if given enough opportunities to pound away on them with his slow shots. However, his speed hand speed is limited, as is his movement around the ring. He’s what you would refer to as a plodder, a fighter that mostly ambles around the ring with very slow foot movement, trying to slug it out with big shots, always thrown very slowly.

The problem with that kind of style, however, is that it’s the exact kind of style that Pavlik has historically done very against. Lockett doesn’t have nearly the same kind of power Pavlik does, which means he’s going to be taking a lot of huge incoming fire without having anything equally big to answer back with to get Pavlik’s respect. Unfortunately for Lockett, if he can’t dive Pavlik off with some big shots, he’s likely to get snowed under very quickly with a barrage of shots in the first few rounds of the fight. I frankly don’t even consider Lockett a top 15 fighter at all; I think that ranking is way too generous for him, because he looks more like a lower B-level fighter than a legitimate top 15.

Because of that, I don’t see this fight as being even a remotely competitive fight at all. Pavlik is not just one level up Lockett, he’s at least two levels up, and this is the worse time of mismatch to watch. I see Pavlik just jumping right on Lockett in the first couple of rounds and mowing him down with heavy fire, pounding him constantly with hooks and straight rights until Lockett collapses under the attack.

I hope I’m wrong about my prediction, for I’d like to see a competitive fight, but judging by Lockett’s inflated record, he doesn’t belong in the same ring with Pavlik. Hopefully, after this fight is over, they remove Lockett from the top 15, because he doesn’t belong there from what I’ve seen of him. I really hope Pavlik doesn’t make a practice of fighting bottom feeders like this.