By Eric Thomas: According to an interview on Boxing talk, Kelly Pavlik (34-1, 30 KOs) is interested in fighting the winner of the Paul Williams (36-1, 27 KOs) vs. Winky Wright (51-4-1, 25 KOs) bout which is for the interim WBO light middleweight title on March 14th. However, Pavlik, 26, remains focused on defending his WBC/WBO middleweight titles on February 21st against his number WBC #1 middleweight challenger Marco Antonio Rubio (43-4-1, 37 KOs) in Youngstown, Ohio.
If Pavlik is serious about wanting to fight the winner of Wright-Williams, it would be a win-win situation for Pavlik, because he could do it without having to risk losing his middleweight belts, while at the same time, he would have a considerable natural size and strength advantage over both Wright and Williams, both of whom are accustomed to fighting at a lower weight class than the middleweight division.
However, before he takes on the winner of those two fighters, Pavlik needs to make sure he’s fully recovered from his embarrassing one-sided 12-round decision loss to 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins in October. That fight, which Pavlik was expected to win, took a lot of air out of his career as Hopkins dominated Pavlik in every way that a fighter possibly could, throwing the harder shots, having better speed, moving better and showing much more advanced boxing skills than the 26-year-old Pavlik.
Though Hopkins later tried to console the beaten almost broken Pavlik afterwards, there was nothing that Hopkins could have done that would have elevated Pavlik’s deflated image after such a terrible mismatch. Hopkins showed not only that Pavlik was deeply flawed as a fighter, but in beating him, exposed some problems that Pavlik may never have the ability to fix.
It’s doubtful that a win over Rubio, 28, who has faced few top middleweights in the division, and who has been beaten by the two decent middleweights he did face, will do much to fix Pavlik’s many flaws or increase his confidence by much. It’s a credit to Pavlik that he would want to face the winner of Wright-Williams at such an early point, because many fighters would want to take it easy for awhile after such a bad defeat like the one Pavlik experienced.
Still, it might be a mistake for Pavlik to take the winner, because both of these guys are very talented, more versatile and have much better work rates than him. I have little doubts that Pavlik could possibly take them out if they were to stand directly in front of him at close range and try to slug, but they probably won’t do that.
Wright will stand at a distance and jab Pavlik all night long, giving him few opportunities to land his big shots, whereas Williams will work angles, moving around constantly and banging him to the body and head. I think Pavlik has a better chance of beating Williams, because Paul likes to stand and trade, and often tries to overwhelm his opponents with punches.
That might not work against Pavlik, because he’d have plenty of chances to land his big shots if Williams elects to stand directly in front of him and eventually, Williams will be hit with something big that might take him out.
There’s a big difference from taking shots from welterweights, which is where Williams has been fighting his entire career up until recently, compared to taking big shots from one of the hardest punchers in the middleweight division in Pavlik. Because of that, I give Pavlik an excellent chance at beating Williams by knockout.
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