By Michael Lieberman: Just as I expected, undefeated WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (34-0, 30 KOs) wiped the deck with his Welsh challenger Gary Lockett (30-2, 21 KOs) dropping him three times and knocking him out in the 3rd round of their scheduled 12-round bout tonight at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Going into the fight, next to nobody gave Lockett much of any chance at pulling off the upset. As it turned out, most people were right as completely obliterated his over-matched opponent.

After a fairly close first round, Pavlik got serious in the 2nd round, serving Lockett up with a number of hard right hands to the head and body. One particular hard right hand to the midsection of Lockett caused him to take a step back, at which point Pavlik landed a finishing right hand that dropped Lockett to one knee.

Already, Lockett’s face looked red and swollen, with his left eye looking bad and his forehead a beet red from the big right hands he’d been forced to absorb from Pavlik. Lockett and briefly attempted a couple of feeble right hands but was immediately met with more incoming fire from Pavlik. For the next 30 seconds, Lockett looked like an over-sized punching bag as he ate some tremendous right hands from Pavlik.

Finally, Pavlik landed two huge right hands, the first rocking Lockett and the second shot causing him to back up and take a knee for the second time in the round. After receiving a standing eight count from referee Eddie Cotton, Lockett lucked out when the round ended shortly thereafter. It was a good thing for him because he was in no shape to take any more big shots from Pavlik and would have likely been finished off in short order if the action has resumed for long. By the 3rd round, Lockett was hardly throwing anything at all, as he was too busy taking big shots from Pavlik.

Stalking the bloody and battered Lockett around the ring like a wounded, Pavlik battered him with lefts and right hands, measuring him and serving with huge sledgehammer right hands. At midpoint of the round, Pavlik landing a chopping right hand that drove Lockett to the canvas for the third and final time in the fight. After getting up at the count of eight, Lockett was saved from further punishment when his trainer Enzo Calzaghe threw in the towel at 1:40 of the 3rd round.

All in all, it was an impressive fight for Pavlik, who as expected slaughtered Lockett and made mincemeat of his face. The fight was a hopeless boxing mismatch even before the first punch was landed, and it wasn’t a particularly appealing bout to look forward to. However, Pavlik needed to make a defense of his title, which he had won in September 2007 with a 7th round stoppage of Jermain Taylor. The reason, it seems, that Pavlik choose a weak opponent like Lockett was because of the angle of Lockett’s trainer, Enzo, who is the father of super middleweight Joe Calzaghe, with whom Pavlik is hoping to set up a fight in the near future.

I suppose Pavlik wanted to encourage some bad blood by destroying a fighter that is close to the Calzaghes, while at the same time doing Enzo a favor by giving his fighter Lockett an undeserved title shot. Hopefully for Pavlik’s sake, this will anger the Enzo, who in turn will want his son Joe to try and get revenge for Pavlik making Lockett look so ridiculous. It’ll probably work, too, and for that reason I feel sorry for Joe Calzaghe. He doesn’t have the power or the youth to beat a fighter of Pavlik’s caliber and we’re likely going to be seeing a fight similar to Pavlik’s destruction of Lockett.

For a fighter with few real boxing skills, Lockett didn’t look all that bad in the 1st round. I mean, he tagged Pavlik with some big shots, mostly right hands, and they looked every bit as hard as the leather Pavlik was throwing. The problem was that when Pavlik fired back with his own shots, Lockett didn’t seem to be able to take them nearly as well as Pavlik took his. Near the end of the round, after Pavlik was tagged by a couple of huge rights from Lockett, he returned fire with two left-right combinations to the head of Lockett, clearly hurting him and causing him to take a back step. Lockett continued fighting back hard but he looked much less effective after those hard right hands, as if they had sapped the strength from him somehow.