By Chris Williams: If Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has his way, WBC/World Boxing Organization middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik’s next fight will be at the Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. Arum thinks that he can get at 40,000 fans that will want to come see Pavlik fight. According to Joe Scalzo of Vindy.com, Arum wants to package Pavlik with a major Hispanic fighter like Julio Chavez Jr. or Antonio Margarito, and then with that star on the undercard, a Pavlik fight could bring in the numbers that Arum is hoping for.

Arum says that the Cowboys Stadium owner Jerry Jones is interested in having Pavlik fight at the Cowboys Stadium. Arum said “Jerry [Jones] was very impressed when he met Kelly, and he told me he’s looking forward to Kelly fighting a main event in Cowboys stadium. When I mentioned it to Kelly, his eyes opened wide.” Pavlik, however, isn’t a huge draw in the United States as of yet.

Even with a major Hispanic star like Chavez Jr., the two might not be popular enough to lure 40,000 fans to the Cowboys Stadium. As Scalzo points out in his article, the biggest crowds that Pavlik has attracted in his 10-year pro career was 10,000 fans for his two fights with Jermain Taylor. To go from 10,000 fans to 40,000 might be asking a lot, especially in Texas, where Pavlik might not be as well known.

Pavlik is from Ohio, and if anywhere in the U.S., that would seem like the logical place for a fight. It’s too bad that Arum can’t set up a fight at the Ohio State Buckeyes Stadium. Of course, he would have to get another fighter for the undercard besides Chavez Jr., because he might not be a huge draw in Ohio. Although Arum mentioned Antonio Margarito as a potential fighter for Pavlik’s fight at the Cowboys Stadium, it’s unclear if Margarito will even have his boxing license back from the athletic commission by the time that Pavlik fights next.

That might be wishful thinking on Arum’s part to think that Margarito will have his license reinstated by then. It might take a lot more than having Pavlik packaged with a fighter like Chavez Jr. for boxing fans to come out in big enough numbers to bring in the 40,000 fans that Arum is hoping for. It would look really bad if a Pavlik and Chavez Jr. fight card ends up bring in only 20,000 or less.

That could mess things up for having future fights in the Cowboys Stadium. Also, there’s the question of who would be facing Pavlik in that fight. Pavlik would have to be matched against a big star for him to attract fans, and thus far in his career, he’s been selectively matched, especially since winning the WBC/WBO middleweight titles. Arum is supposedly looking at putting Pavlik in with the likes of Lucian Bute, Winky Wright or Paul Williams.

I’d be very pleased to see Pavlik matched against Williams or Bute, but I don’t see it happening, at least not in the foreseeable future. Bute would likely easily beat Pavlik, and besides that, he mostly fights in Canada. I can’t see his management team bringing him over the U.S. to fight at the Cowboys Stadium.

And I highly doubt that Arum will want to see Pavlik potentially dominated by Bute the same way Pavlik was by 44-year-old Bernard Hopkins two years ago in a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision loss in October 2008. More than likely, then, we’d be seeing Pavlik matched up against fellow Top Rank fighter Winky Wright. I don’t think a fight between the 38-year-old Wright and Pavlik will draw flies, not at the Cowboys Stadium, and probably not even in Youngstown, Ohio.

Wright hasn’t done much the past two years, aside from losing badly to Paul Williams in a 12 round decision loss last year. I think it would be a really bad idea for Pavlik to be matched against Wright at the Cowboys Stadium. But I think Wright will be the one that is ultimately picked. He fights for Top Rank, and that makes him appealing. I think it’s a winnable fight for Pavlik, only because Wright is getting up there in age.

I think a younger Wright would beat Pavlik without too many problems. But I don’t think that Williams will get the call. He’s too dangerous in my view, and I think he’d beat Pavlik without any problems. Williams would build up a huge lead like he did against Margarito and then coast. However, if Arum wants to attract fans, he might want to look at putting Pavlik with either Williams or Bute.

Either of those fights would be great, but both of those guys will probably beat Pavlik. The last thing I think Arum needs to be thinking about right now is where Pavlik will be fighting next. He has a fight against Sergio Martinez on April 17th at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, and I don’t have a lot of confidence that Pavlik will win this fight. I think Martinez will box circles around Pavlik and make him look bad as Hopkins did.

This is the wrong kind of an opponent for the one-dimensional Pavlik to be fighting. Pavlik does well against fighters like Gary Lockett, Marco Antonio Rubio, Miguel Espino and Edison Miranda. In other words, the kinds of fighters that is totally stationary and plod around the ring. But if you put Pavlik in with a fighter with any kind of movement like Hopkins and Martinez, I see Pavlik being exposed and ending up looking bad.