By Jim Dower: WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-1, 32 KO’s) says he will be fighting two to three more times at middleweight and then moving up to the super middleweight division to compete at that weight class, according to Vindy.com. Pavlik points out that it’s harder and harder for him to make the middleweight limit and he says that many of the fighters like Jermain Taylor, Arthur Abraham and Edison Miranda have moved out of the division into the super middleweight division.

There are few opponents for Pavlik to fight aside fighters like WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm and Winky Wright. Sturm fights out of Germany, and a bout between Pavlik and Sturm would have little relevance for the average American.

Pavlik wouldn’t gain much even if he did beat Sturm and captured another middleweight title. And Wright is 38, and a victory over him would likely be slightly tainted because of Wright’s advanced age and the fact that he was totally dominated by Paul Williams last year in a one-sided 12 round decision win for Williams. A fight between Pavlik and Williams isn’t likely to happen because Williams wants a 50-50 deal and Pavlik’s promoter sees Kelly as the main draw in that fight.

The problem with Pavlik moving up in weight to the super middleweight division is that he would be facing tough fighters like Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Lucian Bute, Arthur Abraham, and Carl Froch. Right now, Pavlik is considered big for a middleweight at 6’2”, but in facing those fighters, Pavlik would be about roughly the same size as most of them. Pavlik’s power advantage would be negligible, not enough to make him the same dominating fighter he is at middleweight.

Additionally, those fighters move a lot better than Pavlik. Indeed, in the case of Ward and Dirrell, they move better than Bernard Hopkins, who boxed circles around Pavlik in beating him by a one-sided 12 round decision in 2008. Pavlik could find himself as just a contender in the super middleweight division and no longer talented enough to be one of the champions. Pavlik would then have to decide whether he was okay with that or if he wanted to move back down in weight to the middleweight division or perhaps move up to the light heavyweight division, which is currently a lot weaker than the super middleweight class.