By Jim Dower: WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-1, 32 KO’s) will be facing his toughest opponent since he was totally dominated by 44-year-old Bernard Hopkins when he steps in the ring with Sergio Martinez on April 17th, at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Pavlik, who has been a disappointment as a middleweight champion, will be facing a crafty fighter in the same mold as Hopkins, only smaller. At 5’11”, Martinez will be giving up three inches in height to Pavlik and a lot more than that in power.

This is where Pavlik will have a decided advantage in the fight. Martinez looked vulnerable in his 12 round draw with Kermit Cintron, also a big puncher, in February 2009. Although Martinez probably should have won the fight by a knockout or at least a 12 round decision, there’s no question that he had problems with the big power shots from Cintron.

Pavlik is an even bigger puncher than Cintron, and is also taller with longer arms. Will that be a problem for Martinez? It might but perhaps not. Martinez recently lost a close 12 round decision to Paul Williams in December, and gave Williams all kinds of problems in the fight. Williams isn’t the puncher that Pavlik is, but he is the same kind of fighter that likes to stand right in front of his opponent and trade.

Martinez’s movement gave Williams fits in the fight, and kept him from getting his shots off. This is the same thing incidentally that Hopkins did in his fight with Pavlik. He used movement and made Pavlik look like a rank amateur. Not much has changed since that loss, as Pavlik fights the exact same way and doesn’t look any different. He’s won fights against Miguel Espino and Marco Antonio Rubio, two middleweight contenders who made the mistake of standing directly in front of Pavlik, but Kelly hasn’t fought anyone really good until now.

The question here is whether Pavlik has improved since his loss to Hopkins. If he hasn’t, then Pavlik will probably get humiliated once again and lose his WBC/WBO middleweight titles. That might not be such a bad thing, because Pavlik hasn’t been the exciting middleweight champion that many people thought he would be because of the low quality opponents that he’s picked out over and over again. And besides that, Pavlik has missed a lot of time nursing a persistent staph infection on his left hand, a problem that made it necessary for him to cancel two bouts with Paul Williams.

Martinez is a southpaw, difficult to predict what he’s going to do, and very hard to hit. He keeps his hands low down by his waist, but his hard to hit because he moves constantly, and is talented at making his opponents miss. Pavlik will have problems with him there’s little doubt.

Pavlik likes to load up with everything he throws, but he’s going to have to take the power of his punches in order for him to land against Martinez. He won’t be able to just tee off like he’s been doing against the sorry opposition that has been spoon fed to Pavlik since he became champion.

Some boxing fans feel that Pavlik has milked his WBC/WBO middleweight titles against weak opposition so that he could make money without the risk of losing his title if he were to fight someone good for a change. The fact that his fights with Williams never materialized because of Pavlik’s hand infection made some people believe that he was trying to get out of the fights.

The fight against Martinez at least will show those same fans that Pavlik isn’t trying to milk his titles, and that he is willing to get out of his comfort zone and fight someone that has a good chance of beating him. Pavlik won’t fighting in his home town of Youngstown, Ohio, but there will certainly be a lot of his fans at the fight, many more than those who come to see Martinez. However, that didn’t help Paul Williams recently in his fight with Martinez, as Sergio quickly won the crowd over with his skillful boxing ability and had them cheering for him by the end of the fight.