By Jim Dower: For what it’s worth, WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (35-1, 31 KOs) says that he could have fought Sergio Mora because his hand is now healed from the staph infection that forced the cancellation of his June 27th bout against Sergio Mora, according to Vindy.com. Pavlik, 27, reportedly developed the staph infection on his right hand back in the time region of his bout with Marco Antonio Rubio in February 2009.

However, it may now be for the best, because there was little fan interest in his title fight with the 28-year-old Mora. Now, it appears that Pavlik could be looking at facing bigger named opponents like World Boxing Council super middleweight champion or International Boxing Federation middleweight champion Arthur Abraham.

Either of those bouts would be much bigger and would earn Pavlik a lot more money than the Mora fight, which would have likely been a track meet with Mora trying to stay away from Pavlik for 12 rounds.

Pavlik may not know this or not, but he might have dodged a bullet by not fighting Mora, because he’s got a style that would have likely been problematic for the one-dimensional Pavlik. Mora is a mover and has quick hands and an excellent jab, similar to Bernard Hopkins, who recently defeated Pavlik by an easy 12 round decision in October 2008.

With Abraham and Froch, however, they like to come straight at their opponents firing big shots. This would be a much better scenario for Pavlik, although both far from being easy fights for Kelly. Historically, Pavlik does well against sluggers like Abraham and Froch.

In the past, Pavlik has beaten Edison Miranda, Gary Lockett, Jose Luis Zertuche and Fulgencio Zuniga all by knockouts. In each case, these fighters tried to trade shots with Pavlik and were eventually beaten down. Pavlik also has two wins against former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Jermain Taylor.

While Taylor is more of a boxer/puncher, in his first fight with Pavlik in September 2007, Taylor attempted to go to war with Pavlik and ended up getting knocked out by Pavlik in the 7th round. Pavlik was down once in the fight, but was able to get up and keep punching without being knocked down again.

Pavlik’s style of fighting in which he takes a lot of shots in order to land his own big punches is a style not unlike that of light welterweight Ricky Hatton, and it’s likely that Pavlik won’t be able to stay on top for a long time with a style like his.

Right now, Pavlik is fortunate that the middleweight division is one of the worst divisions in boxing due talent this ranks of fighters. However, if Pavlik continues to absorb a lot of punishment in the coming years, even the mediocre talent in the middleweight division may soon be good enough to beat him.

Pavlik may also have problems if he grows out of the middleweight division. At super middleweight, there’s much better fighters like Lucian Bute, Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, Chad Dawson and Mikkel Kessler, and it would be very tough on a slugger like Pavlik to compete with these talented fighters.