By Eric Thomas: After being soundly defeated by Bernard Hopkins last Saturday night, a badly disappointed Kelly Pavlik said “I’m going back to 160 where I’m more comfortable.” Pavlik had said that he felt uncomfortable at 170, the catch weight that he and Hopkins had agreed upon ahead of time. The weight was a full 10 pounds higher than Pavlik’s normal weight class of 160, and only five pounds fewer than Hopkins light heavyweight class. Obviously, the weight was a factor in Pavlik losing the fight, but not nearly the full reason for him losing the bout.

Pavlik probably did feel slower and slightly weaker at 170, but that was only because he was fighting someone much more powerful than he normally has been accustomed to fighting at middleweight. In time, Pavlik might get used to fighting at the higher weight and could possibly do well enough to win a title at that weight as well, just as long as he didn’t have to face anyone like Hopkins, that is. In going back down to the middleweight division, Pavlik is returning as an utter failure in his bout with Hopkins, and it seems like he’s regressing by moving back down to middleweight, even though he was never planning on leaving the division in the first place. It’s his failure at performing well, and being seemingly exposed as flawed by a much older fighter, that makes it an even bitterer pill for Pavlik to swallow.

No matter if Pavlik succeeds at defending his middleweight title against his future contenders, he’s still likely to be haunted by his loss to Hopkins for years to come, maybe even permanently. For him to live this down, he’s going to have to beat some really good fighters, much better than fighters like Marco Antonio Rubio, John Duddy, Arthur Abraham, Raul Marquez or Sebastian Sylvester. And yet, those are the types of fighters that Pavlik will be fighting in the short term, and none of them are likely to erase the memory of his defeat by Hopkins one iota.

A potentially bigger problem for Pavlik, other than the stigma involved with his aura of invincibility being crushed by Hopkins, is his lack of skills to fall back in a pinch. Right now, Pavlik lives and dies by his power, and as we saw against Hopkins, when his power isn’t working for him due to an opponents’ movement and defense, Pavlik is at a loss for what he can do. The problem is not Pavlik’s power, in my estimation, it’s his lack of overall skills.

These aren’t the kinds of things that Pavlik is going to be able to fix overnight, if at all, because it takes a lot of training to develop movement and defense. As far as hand speed goes, Pavlik is as fast as he’ll ever be, and will likely only get slower in the coming years rather than the opposite way around. As much as I respect Pavlik as a fighter, I think he’s topped out as far as how good he’ll ever be.

From here, I think it’s all downhill and I see him getting worse rather than better. I don’t think he’s capable of moving better, nor will he improve on cutting off the ring, defending himself or throwing faster punches. In essence, he is what he is. Instead of wasting his time trying to focus on things that he can never be due to his built in limitations, he needs to put his energy into trying to take his opponents out as fast as possible so that they can’t try and utilize the blueprint that Hopkins showed with which to beat Pavlik.

As for Pavlik’s hopeless dream of someday facing Joe Calzaghe, he can forget about that, it’ll never happen now. That’s how it goes sometimes. However, Pavlik can seek solace that he may still end up with a good paying bout against Abraham, who’s a well respected fighter in his own fight. He’s obviously nowhere near as popular as Calzaghe, but then again, Joe only fights the best fighters, and unfortunately Pavlik doesn’t meet his strict criteria at this time.