By Dave Lahr: Sounding more than a little like a fighter with a bad case of sour grapes, WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (35-1, 31 KO’s) came off as dismissive of Showtime’s six-man tournament that begins in October, saying in an article by Joe Scalzo of Vindy.com, “They never asked me and I never wanted to join.” Pavlik, who took a humiliating beating by 44-year-old Bernard Hopkins in a 12-round decision loss in October 2008, said “Let them beat each other up. Let them ruin their careers for peanuts.”
Pavlik was referring to super middleweights Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler, Jermain Taylor and Arthur Abraham, who all will be participating in the tournament. However, it’s odd that Pavlik is taking such a negative view towards the tournament, because this is something that will give each of these fighters a lot of attention regardless of how things turn out.
It isn’t as if HBO, who Pavlik fights for, is rushing out to show their fights, so why not fight in the Showtime tournament? I hate to say this, but it reminds me a lot of the old fable of the fox and the grapes. The fox unable to get to the grapes, bitterly remarks that they’re probably sour anyway.
In essence, the fox sees getting to the grapes as being an unattainable goal and responds by saying criticizing their value. This seems to be what Pavlik is doing, because in taking part in the tournament that he wasn’t invited to, Pavlik would have huge obstacles in trying to get by Froch, Dirrell, Ward, Kessler and Abraham.
I really can’t see Pavlik beating any of them the Jermain Taylor, who he’s already beaten twice. Froch is like a bigger, stronger version of Pavlik, and he isn’t expected to beat the likes of Kessler, Ward and Dirrell.
“They’re going to burn their whole career and for what? Nobody watches Showtime,” Pavlik said. I kind of doubt that they’ll be burning their career up by fighting in the tournament, like Pavlik says they will. On the contrary, this will help them because instead of fighting opponents like Marco Antonio Rubio or Gary Lockett, who many boxing fans were turned off in watching Pavlik fight, the tournament fighters will be fighting the best fighters in the division.
I’d like to see Pavlik fight Daniel Jacobs, because right now he’s about the only halfway decent fighter in the entire division which is barren talent. Indeed, the middleweight division is arguably the worst one in all of boxing with the cruiserweight division coming in a close second.
The super middleweight division is where most of the talent is located for some reason. I’d like to see Pavlik put on a few pounds and try his luck with Dirrell, Ward, Kessler, Abraham and Froch. My guess is that Pavlik would take a beating along the lines of his lopsided loss to the 44-year-old Hopkins last year.
I still don’t think Pavlik has won back the fans that he lost by losing that fight yet. It takes good opponents for that to happen and opponents like Rubio and Lockett, while decent fighters, probably won’t get the job done in resurrecting Pavlik’s career. That’s why it seems sad to see how risk aversive that Pavlik is sounding in this article. He kind of reminds me a little of Felix Sturm, the WBA middleweight champion, who continually fights soft opponents and takes the easiest opponent he can get for his non-mandatory defenses, as if he’s trying to mild his title for as long as he can rather than trying to fight the best fighters.
Pavlik went on to say that he thinks that the winner of the tournament will then immediately abandon Showtime and move over to HBO, where he feels that all best fighters fight over there. They have some good fighters, but I wouldn’t say that Showtime doesn’t have equally good fighters. Floyd Mayweather Jr., who fights for HBO, may not be the best fighter in the welterweight division by a long shot, yet he fights for HBO. So what does that say? Manny Pacquiao fights for HBO, yet I seriously doubt he could beat Shane Mosley, Paul Williams or Antonio Margarito without draining them down to 140 or some god awful catch weight devised to weaken them enough to be able to beat them.
Pavlik added that he thinks that he’ll be able to beat the winner of the Showtime tournament. I kind of doubt it. If he can’t beat Hopkins or even fight competitively with him, then he would stand no chance against any of these fighters in my view. Like I said, the only fighter I think Pavlik could beat is Taylor and I’m not so sure about that now.
Taylor came close to beating Pavlik in their rematch in 2008, and Pavlik was softened up since then in his loss to Hopkins. Regardless, I couldn’t see Pavlik being competitive with most of the tournament participants. It is sad to see him rationalize about not wanting to participate in the tournament by discrediting Showtime, the amount of money they’ll make, the risks that will be involved in participating.
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