By Jason Kim: At yesterday’s press conference in New York, Paul Williams (37-1, 27 KO’s) and WBO/WBC middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (35-1, 31 KO’s) got the ball rolling to start hyping their December 5th fight in Atlantic City. Williams, 28, a former welterweight champion, seems to have his eyes wide open to what he’s about to face against the hard hitting Pavlik, saying “I know Pavlik is going to hit with some big shots. His game plan is to try to hit me with a power shot and hurt me to get some respect.”

This may actually be Pavlik’s only chance of beating Williams, because Pavlik doesn’t have the work rate needed to outwork Williams and needs to try and hurt him to either take him out or slow him down somehow. Pavlik was beaten badly by then 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins in October 2008, and looked very limited and one dimensional against the old Hopkins.

Williams doesn’t have Hopkins’ hand speed, explosive power or his ring savvy, so this fight is going to have a completely different look to it than that fight. Pavlik was previously supposed to be fighting Williams in October, but a staph infect on Pavlik’s left hand made it necessary to reschedule the fight for December 5th, so that Pavlik would seek treatment for the hand.

Two operations later, Pavlik is finally ready to go and looking forward to the battle. Choosing a fighter as tough as Williams will be a very risky move for the young Pavlik, as by the time he enters the ring with Williams in December, Pavlik will have been out of the ring for 10 long months. It will have been longer than that, however, since he faced a dangerous opponent because his last opponent was Marco Antonio Rubio, an over-matched fighter that never stood a chance against Pavlik.

To go from that fight into a bout against the tall and talented Williams is going to be a huge jump in competition for Pavlik. Williams is clearly a lot better than Rubio, and also better than most, if not all, of Pavlik’s other prior opponents, excluding Jermain Taylor and Hopkins.

The loss to Hopkins did a real number on Pavlik’s career, causing his credibility as a fighter to nosedive with boxing fans. Pavlik is still the WBO/WBC middleweight champion because he fought Hopkins at a catch weight, but he might as well not have the titles because the image of him being easily beaten by Hopkins still exists with fans. Pavlik realizes he has to earn back the respect from fans, remarking “I still have a lot to prove. Even after the Williams fight, a dominant performance, there still would be a lot to prove.”

You can say that again. Beating Williams is just the start of what Pavlik needs to do to win back boxing fans. it’s hard to back a fighter like Pavlik when he was so soundly beaten by the 43-year-old Hopkins. The middleweight division isn’t exactly stacked with talent right now, and some boxing fans see Pavlik as a champion for that reason alone. If he was fighting in the super middleweight division, some people feel that there would be no place for Pavlik as a champion because of the huge amount of talent in the division.

Williams has captured titles (WBO) in the welterweight and light welterweight division and is looking to win titles in his third weight class. He was forced to move out of the welterweight division because none of the top fighters wanted to face him.

This made is necessary for Williams to move up to the light middleweight class to seek out fights. The light middleweight division is thin on big named opponents, hence the need for Williams to move up yet again to go after Pavlik’s titles. Williams is convinced that he’ll beat Pavlik, saying “I am not going to sleep. I think I am going to put him to sleep.”

It’s doubtful that Williams will knock Pavlik out, because Kelly has shown to have a great chin, but Williams can outwork Pavlik if he can stand up to his shots. Williams has never been hurt before in a fight. If Pavlik is unable to hurt him, look for Williams to beat Pavlik as bad as Hopkins did.