By Dave Lahr: WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-1, 21 KO’s) faces Sergio Martinez (44-2-2, 24 KO’s) next Saturday night in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Sadly, this will be Pavlik’s toughest fight since he captured the middleweight titles three long years ago. Some people have their doubts about Pavlik having the needed boxing skills to win this fight, and I’m one of them. Pavlik is one of the slower fighters in the top 10, and although he is a champion, he’s got zero hand speed, a very basic offense and rather poor defensive skills.

Pavlik thinks his hand speed will be better than people expect. I kind of doubt it. Pavlik is going to look as slow as he usually does. But Martinez, 35, will probably make Pavlik look even slower because of his fast hands. Martinez isn’t unbeatable as he just proved in losing a close 12 round decision to Paul Williams last November. But Martinez is especially difficult on slow sluggers like Pavlik because of his ability to get in, land fast punches and then get out of the way without getting hit.

Pavlik is the kind of fighter that needs an opponent that stands directly in front of him so he can get his slow punches off. As we saw in Pavlik’s humiliating 12 round decision loss to 44-year-old Bernard Hopkins in 2008, if a fighter uses lateral movement, clinching and fast shots, Pavlik looks horrible and seems lost. Since winning the WBC/WBO titles against Jermain Taylor in 2007, Pavlik has had the luck of being matched against the exact kind of slow and stationary fighters that he specializes in beating.

He’s had fights against Gary Lockett, Marco Antonio Rubio and Miguel Espino, all slow plodders that like to slug and have very little ability to move. However, now that Pavlik is facing a fighter whose entire style is centered on moving, hitting and making his opponents miss, boxing fans are wondering whether Pavlik is about to get a good schooling again. I think Pavlik is going to drown big time against Martinez and end up looking rather amateurish in this fight. I don’t think he’s going to get knocked out.

That won’t happen because Pavlik’s chin is too good and Martinez probably won’t load up on enough of his punches to put Pavlik in any trouble. But I do see Pavlik getting badly dominated by the quicker more elusive Martinez and end up losing this fight by another lopsided 12 round decision. It’s too bad that Pavlik isn’t such a plodder and doesn’t have better hand speed. If the guy could punch with any kind of quickness, I could see him winning this fight.

The bad part about it is that if Pavlik loses the fight, he’ll lose his titles and there won’t be any interest in seeing him matched up against IBF super middleweight champion or the winner of the Super Six tournament. It will have all been lost. Pavlik would then have to rebuild his shattered career and pick up the pieces of the broken promise.

What he should have done instead of staying at middleweight, where there’s no real opposition because of the lack of talent in the division, was move up to super middleweight and taken part in the Super Six tournament. At least if he had done that, he might have been good enough to get some wins and make more of a name for himself by facing a lot of quality opposition in a short time instead of staying at middleweight and just fighting unknown fighters that few boxing fans care about. I can only imagine who Pavlik will fight next if he beats Martinez next week.