By Dave Lahr: WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s finger is still infected with staph on his left hand, and because of that his December 5th bout with Paul Williams has once again been canceled, according to Dan Rafael. This is really bad news for both Williams and Pavlik because this is the 2nd time their fight has been cancelled for this reason. And for Pavlik, this is the third fight he’s now had to cancel. He also had to back out of a fight with Sergio Mora.

“It’s the same finger giving him [Pavlik] problems. They told me he can’t make a fist, promoter Bob Arum says about Pavlilk. It’s unclear whether a substitute fighter will step in to fight Williams on December 5th. There is word that WBC light middleweight Sergio Martinez is rumored to be interested in stepping in and fighting Williams.

Pavlik’s infected hand has been a problem for many months now. He had surgery on it previously to try and rid his hand of the infection, but it’s still a problem from the looks of it. Pavlik, 27, has only defended his WBC/WBO middleweight titles twice since winning them in September 2007 with a 7th round knockout over Jermain Taylor. Pavlik last defended the titles this year in February against Marco Antonio Rubio, stopping in the 9th round.

As a champion, Pavlik has been a bitter disappointment to many boxing fans, who originally thought that he was going to be an exciting champion when he took over for Taylor. However, Pavlik has taken the easy route with fights against Rubio and Gary Lockett. Pavlik fought Taylor in rematch in 2008, but the fight didn’t have the title on the line. And then last year Pavlik fought a big money fight against Bernard Hopkins and got badly schooled by him. It was a bad match-up for Pavlik even before the first punch was thrown because of Hopkins’ age and his fighting style.

Williams might want to start looking for other alternatives than waiting around for Pavlik’s hand to finally heal. Williams hasn’t fought since beating Winky Wright in April. Williams dominated Wright and made it look easy in beating him. Williams, however, needs to stay active, because waiting on Pavlik’s hand to finally heal might mean another month or maybe longer before he’s finally ready to go. Williams is the interim World Boxing Organization light middleweight champion. It might be in his best interest to go after WBO champion Sergeii Dzinziruk instead of waiting around for ages for a fight against Pavlik.