By William Mackay: This is probably a no win situation that WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (35-1, 31 KO’s) finds himself in tonight in his title fight against Miguel Angel Espino (20-2-1, 9 KO’s) at the Beeghly Center, in Youngstown, Ohio. The problem is that this isn’t the opponent that boxing fans wanted to see Pavlik face, preferring to see him fight Paul Williams. That fight fell through after it was determined that Pavlik’s staph infected left hand still wasn’t completely healed by the time that their December 5th fight would have rolled around.

Pavlik had little choice but to cancel that bout. However, when he his hand finally did heal enough to fight, Espino, the number #3 contender in the WBC, was put in place of Williams. Paul and his team, tired of waiting for Pavlik’s infection plagued hand to finally heal, moved in another direction. Espino has little chance in this fight against Pavlik, something that’s not lose with the boxing public, many of which don’t want to see Pavlik fight this guy.

The WBC is partly to blame, because it was their sanctioning body that decided to rank Espino so highly. It’s a mystery as to why the WBC opted to rank Espino at number #3 over fighters like Winky Wright, Daniel Geale, Matthew Macklin and Roman Karmazin. Those fighters are flawed as well, but I think they might have been a better off choice at number #3 in place of Espino.

Espino will come to fight, but he looks way out of his class in this fight. He was beaten in the past by Peter Manfredo Jr., a former star from the Contender. Espino was also beaten by Daniel Edouard. To Espino credit, he has put those defeats behind him at won his last 11 fights, but those wins have come against 2nd tier opposition.

Espino hasn’t fought a top tier fighter since suffering the losses to Edouard and Manfredo Jr. That’s the problem. The WBC has done Pavlik favors by ranking Espino so highly without him having to prove that he deserves that high ranking. As such, there’s a great chance that this fight will end up being a horrible mismatch with Espino getting destroyed in a round or two. I think Pavlik is capable of taking Espino out quickly if he wants, but I see him carrying Espino for a few more rounds so that he can get some badly needed practice in the ring.

It’s been 10 months since Pavlik last fought and there’s likely a good chance that he’ll have a bit of rust on him from the inactivity. Of course, if Pavlik chooses to go after Espino immediately looking to knock him out, then I think Pavlik will stop him in one or two rounds at the most. Espino is way over his head in this fight, and it’s just really too bad that he didn’t have any prior fights against top tier opponents that he actually beat. Fighting and defeating 2nd and 3rd tier fighters isn’t the type of experience that will help much in a fight against a slugger like Pavlik.