By Adam Fillingham: WBC and WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik is now short of opposition since the ‘super 6’ championship (which includes Mikkel Kessler, Carl Froch, Arthur Abraham, Jermain Taylor, Andre Ward and Andre Dirrell) has gone on without him.
Now Pavlik, 27 could sit it out and wait for the championship to end in 2010 and fight the winner, keeping himself busy fighting his number one ‘mandatory’ challengers. This though will do nothing for his credibility as a fighter as we all know he is in a different league to the likes of ( WBO no.1) Sebastian Zbik (27(10)-0-0) and the WBC no.1 Domenico Spada (29-2-0).
What would liven things up would be for him to unify the middleweight division. This would give him more credibility as a fighter and would cancel out his critics after his devastating loss to a 44 year old Bernard Hopkins.
Pavlik has I fight with two weight world champion Paul Williams lined up for the near future. A win against Williams would silence a few critics but Williams hasn’t fought many times at middleweight and may not have the experience in most peoples minds to take out a champion like Pavlik.
First of all, after a fight with Williams, in my opinion he must defeat Sebastian Zbik. He is not a big name but he has a great record over mediocre opposition. In defeating him it would give him confidence in a unification fight with Felix Sturm the WBA world champion.
If he does go on to defeat Sturm (33(14)-2(1)-1) then he would likely sign a fight against the winner of the fight between Giovanni Lorenzo and Sebastian Sylvester who will most likely face off for the vacant IBF world title soon.
Winning these fights would show the world he isn’t the over-rated and one dimensional fighter he was made out to be. Unifying the middleweight division with all four belts is one of the best achievements a boxer could dream of and would likely set him up a fight with the IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute to decide who would fight the winner of the ‘Super 6’ tournament.
Whether he will do this is yet to be discovered but what I do know is that defeating the best fighters in the division instead of hiding behind your belts and fighting mandatories will give you far more credibility as a fighter.
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