By Jason Kim: World Boxing Organization/WBC middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s left hand is still healing after surgery on August 31st. It’s unknown at this point when Pavlik will be healed enough to start training for a December 5th title defense against Paul Williams in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Pavlik has been hampered by a chronic Staph infection on his left middle knuckle for the past couple of months which has prevented Pavlik in first defending his titles against Sergio Mora and is now causing problems for Pavlik in fighting Williams. With any luck, Pavlik could be get medical clearance to start training soon, possibly by next month.
That would be the ideal situation because it would give Pavlik two solid months of training before taking on the dangerous Williams on December 5th. This is a fight that Pavlik really needs because he hasn’t done much since winning the titles over Jermain Taylor in 2007.
Pavlik has beaten Gary Lockett and Marco Antonio Rubio, and fought Taylor in a rematch, beating him by a 12 round decision. Pavlik was beaten by Bernard Hopkins last year in a one-sided 12 round decision loss in October. That win really hurt Pavlik with boxing fans, because of how badly Hopkins beat Pavlik.
The fight was never close from the beginning and seemed to get even more one-sided as the fight progressed into the later rounds. In hindsight, it seemed like a bad decision for Pavlik to fight someone like Hopkins in the first place, because it was a situation where Pavlik would get little credit even if he did win because of Hopkins’ old age. Pavlik needs to make boxing fan forget about that fight somehow.
Williams is a good start, but it will likely take more than that to get people to forget about Pavlik losing to Hopkins, simply because of how bad Pavlik looked in that fight. He looked incredibly limited, like a fighter that was more of a contender than someone who is considered to be the best in the middleweight division.
A win over Williams is not by any means a forgone conclusion. Williams may be moving up in weight from the light middleweight division to take this fight, but he has good boxing skills, likes to throw a ton of punches per round and has a longer reach than Pavlik. The one advantage that Pavlik has in this fight is his power.
Pavlik hits a lot harder than Williams and will likely be benefited by Williams’ tendency to stand directly in front of his opponents. However, Pavlik, even under those circumstances, might come up empty against Williams because Paul can take a heck of a shot without going down.
Williams took Antonio Margarito’s best punches for 12 rounds and kept firing back. Williams defeated Margarito by a close 12 round decision in a grueling war. However, if Pavlik is able to comeback well from his hand surgery, you would have to favor him against Williams because of his better power and due to Pavlik being accustomed to fighting at middleweight.
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