By Sam Gregory: This Saturday night, 26 year old Kelly Pavlik will put his undisputed middleweight title on the line at the Chevrolet Centre in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio against WBC’s No. 1 challenger and lifelong resident of Torreon, Mexico, 28 year old Marco Antonio Rubio.
Going into this fight Kelly Pavlik, with a record of 34-1, 30 of the wins coming by way of knockout, is a heavy favorite over his opponent Marco Antonio Rubio who has a record of 43-4 with 37 knockouts, despite his 12th round loss to Bernard Hopkins in his last fight just four months ago.
Rubio earned his shot at Pavlik with a 12 round split decision over Enrique Ornelas on the undercard of Pavlik’s fight with Bernard Hopkins. Rubio said he wasn’t necessarily looking for a fight with Pavlik, “I was looking for a championship fight”.
Rubio hasn’t been in as many high profile fights as Pavlik but he is experienced and considered well tested. Although most of his fights have been in Mexico, since he first turned pro in May of 2000, Rubio has fought in Nevada, Texas, Illinois, and Pennsylvania as well as fighting in the Ukraine and Russia.
Rubio told the media at a press conference in Youngstown that he has “No problem fighting in Pavlik’s hometown. I’ve done it before,” he said. “Most of the time the fans just like boxing”.
“Actually, you’re appreciated more if you put up a good fight against the hometown idol as opposed to just going in there and getting beat up”.
Pavlik’s trainer, Jack Loew expects Pavlik to bounce back after his lose to Hopkins and a big reason is Rubio’s style of fighting. Rubio likes to stand in front of his opponent and trade punches. Hopkins won his fight with Pavlik because he moved around a lot but that’s not Rubio’s style. He shows more upper-body movement than Pavlik, which is a trademark of Mexican fighters, but he does appear to be hittable, especially when compared to Hopkins.
Going into his fight with Bernard Hopkins, fans expected to see Pavlik’s youth and strength prevail, instead it was Hopkins extraordinary ring craftsmanship and superlative hand-speed that carried The Executioner to a unanimous decision over the less experienced WBC and WBO middleweight champion.
According to Compubox, in Pavlik’s only ring lose, his 43 year old opponent threw more punches overall, (530-463) and landed more (172-108), mostly on the strength of his power punching. Hopkins outlanded Pavlik by a 148-55 margin which translates to a 49 percent connect rate for Hopkins to Pavlik’s 26 percent. B-Hop also threw 304 power shots to Pavlik’s 211.
The key to Pavlik’s success over Rubio is to impose his volume punching style as exemplified in his two fights with Jermain Taylor. In those fights Pavlik averaged 66 and 70 punches per round as opposed to just 38.6 against Hopkins. Coincidentally, 38.6 punches per round was the exact rate Pavlik held Taylor to in their rematch.
Rubio has predicted he will knockout Pavlik Saturday night; a remark that hasn’t generated much excitement in the Pavlik camp. In fact, Rubio has been an almost overlooked element in this weekend’s events.
In a recent conference call with the media this week the discussion with Pavlik lasted almost an hour, the topic of Rubio however lasted less than 2 minutes.
When Kelly Pavlik and his trainer Jack Loew were in New York last month for a pre-fight press conference, Rubio was said to be so friendly that Loew, who enjoys the pre-fight verbal sparring remembered thinking, “I can’t rip this guy, he’s too nice”.
In his closing comments to the media about this weekend’s fight Rubio said, “I’ve been in losses and I always get up and get back to the top, all I’ll say is I’m well prepared and I’m going home the champion.”
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