By Jim Dower: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-2, 32 KO’s) made his decision on Monday to leave the middleweight division and move up in weight after meeting with his trainer Jack Loew, his father Mike Pavlik Sr., and his co-manager Cameron Dunkin, according to Vindy.com. Pavlik, 28, had problems making weight for his recent 12 round unanimous decision loss to Sergio Martinez on April 17th.
Although Pavlik was able to make the 160 middleweight limit, he did it by draining himself of water weight. After he weighed in, Pavlik put on an incredible 18 pounds of water weight and came into the fight against Martinez weighing 178 pounds, which is three pounds over the light heavyweight division’s upper weight limit.
Pavlik has gained even more weight in the two and three weeks since his fight and is now reportedly weighing in above 190. It wouldn’t be a big issue if the weight was fat, but it’s not. Pavlik has been putting more muscle as he’s grown older and his metabolism has slowed down. The effort of having to take off massive amounts of muscle and water weight to get to middleweight would likely continue to weaken Pavlik in future fights. Pavlik looked slow against Martinez and seemed to run out of gas in the last part of the fight, allowing Martinez to get back in the fight and win the remaining four rounds.
There’s no word as of yet whether Pavlik will move up to super middleweight (168 lbs) or if he’ll bypass that division and move up to light heavyweight. Given how big Pavlik has become, it might not be a good idea for him to fight at super middleweight either. The division is loaded with talented speedy fighters and Pavlik could find himself having problems against the faster fighters. Pavlik would likely do well against a segment of the super middleweight division, perhaps against fighters like Carl Froch, Arthur Abraham, Edison Miranda and possibly Mikkel Kessler, but he might have problems against the quicker guys like Andre Ward, Lucian Bute and Andre Dirrell.
Pavlik would need a good set of wheels to beat those fighters. And at the same time, the 6’2” Pavlik’s size would no longer be so remarkable in moving up in weight against the big super middleweights. He wouldn’t be able to just steamroll over the smaller guys like he was doing in the past, and would have to deal with the massive amount of talented fighters in the division.
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