By Dave Lahr: WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik signed to fight Paul Williams for a fight that will be taking place on October 3rd, at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. The negotiations had been taking place for several weeks, and there was a time when it looked as if the fight might not take place.
The main issue was over how the fighters would split the $3.75 million license fee, Rafael says, as well as the live gate. At one point, it looked as if Pavlik would have to seek out another opponent instead of Williams, with Winky Wright and Peter Manfredo Jr. as the fighters they were looking at. Wright would have been a decent opponent. However, with his one-sided 12 round decision loss to Williams in April, it would have been a fight that probably wouldn’t have been a popular one.
This is bold move by Pavlik, and frankly I’m surprised that he chose to take this fight. Williams has a much higher work rate than him, meaning that unless Pavlik is able to knock Williams out, Pavlik is going to lose by a landslide. Williams has never been hurt before despite having fought one of the toughest welterweights in the division in Antonio Margarito in 2007.
Williams’ only loss came against the crafty Carlos Quintana, who used a lot of lateral movement along with in and out attacks to win a 12 round decision. Williams then worked on bulking up his upper body and came back four months later to avenge his loss to Quintana by stopping him in the 1st round in February 2008.
Williams has never been hurt before, so Pavlik is going to have to come up with a back up plan just in case he can’t get Williams out of there. I don’t have a lot of faith that Pavlik will be able to change his style enough to win a decision over a fighter like Williams, because Kelly doesn’t have the hand speed, work rate or the ring movement necessary to beat a fighter like Williams by a decision.
One good thing that Pavlik does have going for him is that Williams tends to stand directly in front of his opponents while unloading on them. This could make it possible for Pavlik to hurt Williams with one of his bombs.
Williams, 28, has previously won titles in the welterweight and light middleweight divisions. Due to his high work rate and 6’1” height, few welterweights were interested in fighting him. This made it necessary for Williams to start moving up in weight to have more chances of getting a big named opponent.
However, he still is capable of fighting at welterweight, if a popular fighter like Floyd Mayweather Jr. would show interested in fighting him. That’s not likely to happen, though. Williams moved up in weight late year, beating Andy Kolle and Verno Phillips at light middleweight. Williams became the interim WBO light middleweight champion with his 8th round stoppage win over Phillips. In April 2009, Williams dominated Winky Wright in a 12 round decision victory, a fight that was never close.
Pavlik, 27, who some boxing fans were beginning to think not interested in taking on quality opponents, will be making his 3rd defense of his middleweight titles that he won back in 2007 with a 7th round stoppage victory over Jermain Taylor.
That seems like a long time ago, because Pavlik’s opponents have been less than exciting since he won the title, fighting Gary Lockett, Marco Antonio Rubio at middleweight and then taking an ill advised fight against the 44-year-old Bernard Hopkins at a 170 catch weight. Pavlik won the middleweight fights over his soft opposition, but he was schooled badly by Hopkins and made to look like an unskilled novice in the process.
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