By Jim Dower: The proposed December 4th fight between former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-2, 32 KO’s) and unbeaten junior middleweight contender Julio Cesar Chavz Jr. (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) will be taking place at the Cowboy Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. That’s where Bob Arum of Top Rank would like the fight to take place, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Arum is over-joyed at the prospects of this fight taking place, and is expecting a turnout for the fight between 40,000 and 50,000.

While I think this is a very good fight, I think those numbers are a little bit too high for a match-up between Chavez and Pavlik unless they put on a good undercard with some well-known fighters in competitive fights. Pavlik lost his WBC/WBO middleweight titles in a 12 round decision loss to Sergio Martinez last April.

Pavlik had problems making weight and ballooned up to an enormous 178 after the weigh-in. The extra weight appeared to make Pavlik slow and it seemed to effect his stamina in the last part of the fight when he began to get dominated by Martinez. Rafael reports that Pavlik has had a change of mind, that he’s going to stay at the 160 pound middleweight division and will be hiring a nutrition to help him keep his weight down.

That sounds like a wise decision on Pavlik’s part, because he probably would have had big problems in the super middleweight division against guys like Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, Lucian Bute and Mikkel Kessler. There’s already a Pavlik-like fighter in the super middleweight division in Super Six tournament contestant Carl Froch, and he’s struggling against the faster, more elusive younger fighters.

Pavlik could have ended up in the same boat as Froch if he moved up in weight and had to take on guys like Dirrell and Ward. Pavlik is much better off staying at middleweight, where he has a much better chance of dominating the division.

Pavlik is excited about the Chavez Jr. bout, and also really likes the idea of fighting at the Cowboy Stadium. It’s not hard to see why. Chavez Jr. is a fighter that is smaller than Pavlik at 6’0”, isn’t particularly fast on his feet, and loves to trade with his opponents. Chavez gets hit a lot, and can be hurt. Indeed, is last opponent, John Duddy, staggered Chavez in the 6th round of their last fight on June 26th, at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas.

Chavez Jr. won that fight by a lopsided 12 round decision, but no one in their right mind would consider Duddy on par with Pavlik. That’s a fighter that Pavlik would likely mop the deck with and stop without any problems whatsoever. Pavlik struggles against fighters that use movement like Bernard Hopkins and Martinez.

Freddie Roach, Chavez’s trainer, likes the idea of Chavez fighting Pavlik. Roach must think Chavez Jr. can follow the blueprint that Hopkins and Martinez set on how to beat Pavlik. For that to happen, Roach is going to have to make major changes to Chavez’s fighting style because he did a lot of brawling in his last fight against Duddy and was there to be hit when Duddy chose to let his hands go.