By William Mackay: WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik has already been exposed last year by former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins, who spanked Pavlik royally in beating him by a 12 round unanimous decision in October. Pavlik was never even in the fight and took a bad beating from the then 43-year-old Hopkins. Excuses came up later for this and that, but the fact remains Pavlik got dominated by Hopkins.

The only good news that came out of that fight was that Pavlik didn’t lose his two middleweight titles, since the fight was held at a catch weight instead of at middleweight. The other goods news was that Pavlik at least wasn’t knocked out in the fight, if you can consider that a minor victory.

On December 5th of this year, Pavlik will be fighting Paul Williams, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Williams, 28, is one of the best fighters in boxing and has won titles in the welterweight and recently the light middleweight divisions. Few boxers want to fight Williams because of his long reach and busy work rate.

Pavlik, however, isn’t afraid to fight Williams and perhaps feel that he is insulated from being beaten by Williams because Paul is moving up in weight to fight him. That could be, but Pavlik wins most of his fights by knockout and isn’t the type of fighter that generally out-boxes his opponents.

Pavlik does, however, usually outwork his opposition but he never averages 80 to 100 punches per round like Williams. Pavlik might do well to throw 50 or 60. This is where the problem could be for Pavlik in his fight with Williams. Pavlik won’t be able to keep up with Williams’ enormous work rate and will have to figure out a way to slow Williams down or else end up losing the fight and his titles along with it.

Pavlik has excellent power and does well against fighters that are directly in front of him, but he isn’t someone that will be able to handle getting hit as often as Williams will be hitting him on December 5th. Pavlik is counting on Williams slowing down once he starts landing his power shots. But Pavlik could end up being the one that shuts down offensively.

This is essentially what happened to Pavlik in his fight with Hopkins. Bernard got off to a good start in the first three rounds and Pavlik seemed almost to give up after that and looked to be going through the motions in the final nine rounds. This is great that Pavlik chose to fight a quality fighter like Williams, because boxing fans are going to love this fight.

With that said, I think Pavlik is going to get dominated by Williams and the outcome may be eerily similar to the Hopkins fight. Pavlik hasn’t proven anything since he was defeated by Hopkins. Bernard made Pavlik look slow, and one dimensional. Pavlik won his next fight after that against Marco Antonio Rubio in a 9th round stoppage victory. That win didn’t prove much for Pavlik because Rubio was so limited and just basically stood in front of Pavlik until he was mowed down in the 9th.