By Dave Lahr: With WBO/WBC middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s cancellation of his October 3rd bout against Paul Williams (37-1, 27 KO’s), it puts Williams and his promoter Dan Goosen in a situation where they need to decide to either wait for Pavlik’s infected knuckle to heal properly for a possible fight in December or forget the whole thing and go with a fight against 44-year-old Bernard Hopkins (49-5, 32 KO’s) at a catch weight.

The Hopkins fight would seem like the much better option for obvious reasons, since Hopkins badly schooled Pavlik last year in a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision victory in October. The one sticking point in a battle against Hopkins is that he wants the fight to take place at a catch weight of 170, whereas Williams and Goosen want the fight to take place at 165.

The lighter weight is much better for Williams, because he only recently moved up to light middleweight and having to put 16 pounds to fight Hopkins would be asking a lot of Williams in this fight. Hopkins, a light heavyweight who fights at 175, would only have to lose a mere five pounds if he were to fight Williams at 170.

That’s basically nothing for Hopkins. But for Williams, it would be asking a lot of him to put that kind of weight on for a fight against Hopkins. Even 165 seems like a lot of weight for Williams. However, he’s still willing to make the sacrifice and put on the weight to fight Hopkins.

I’m not so sure that Hopkins will bend much to come in at the weight that Williams is asking for because Hopkins is traditionally someone that is a hard bargainer, and it’s doubtful he will want to give in on this. Hopkins no doubt will see himself as being the one that’s bringing the big name to the table, and will likely not want to give in by fighting at 165.

The fight probably won’t be made unless Hopkins does come down to 165, because it would almost suicidal for the tall, slender Williams to fight at 170. Williams doesn’t have the build to fight in the light heavyweight range and he’d probably be slow and weak at that weight, whereas Hopkins would be strong and quick, having fought in that range for the past three years.

If Williams has no other choice, he might want to take the fight at 170, because it’s unclear whether Pavlik’s hand problem will be healed by December. That would be a big risk for Williams and Goosen to wait around hoping that Pavlik’s chronic hand infection heals up.

A fight against Hopkins would likely bring in better money than an fight against Pavlik. I don’t know that Williams should turn this down if Hopkins sticks to his guns and decides he won’t budge below 170. Look at it this way, Hopkins is 44-years-old and didn’t look all that good in his fight against Joe Calzaghe.

At 28, Williams will have advantages that Hopkins doesn’t have in terms of stamina and youth. Hopkins didn’t get pressed hard in his fight against Pavlik like he did in his loss to Joe Calzaghe, and Williams can possibly wear the old fighter down if he makes him fight hard for three minutes of every round.