By Chris Williams: Junior middleweight contender Pawel Wolak (28-1, 18 KO’s) will be fighting on the undercard of WBA junior middleweight clash between champion Miguel Cotto vs. 37-year-old former two division world champion Ricardo Mayorga on March 12th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pawel, 29, doesn’t have an opponent picked out as off yet, but there is talk that he could fight either former International Boxing Federation (IBF) welterweight champion Joshua Clottey or former WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman. Both Foreman and Clottey are coming off of one-sided beatings and all three fighters are with Top Rank.

Pawel is ranked #7 WBA, #11 IBF and #13 WBO in the junior middleweight division. He’s kind of slow, not a big puncher and tends to get his wins by throwing a massive amount of punches. Pawel’s opposition up until now has consisted mostly of 2nd tier fodder. He stepped it up against Ishe Smith in 2008 and was badly schooled in a 10 round decision loss. Since then, Wolak has been unbeaten against the opposition that’s been fed to him. During that time, Wolak has fought and beaten guys like Carlos Nascimento, Ishmail Arvin, James Moore and Jose Pinzon. No one really spectacular, as you can see.

Pawel is a good serviceable fighter, perhaps rung down from Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. I don’t see the guy as a champion in the future and rate him as one of those middle of the pack guys that will hang around and serve a purpose as a gatekeeper type fighter. If he ends up fighting Foreman or Clottey, he’ll likely lose. I can see him perhaps beating Clottey if he can out-work him. Clottey won’t beat a guy like Wolak if he just covers up all night long throwing only 10 punches per round like Clottey did in his loss to Pacquiao. I’m not impressed with Foreman at all, but I think he’d easily beat Wolak. Foreman was one of those guys that was good against the opposition that was put in there with him but once he was matched semi-difficult with Cotto, he literally fell apart.

I don’t like Wolak being the chief support for the Cotto-Mayorga fight. Given that they’re asking boxing fans to purchase the Cotto vs. Mayorga fight on pay-per-view instead of just regular cable, I think they need an actual star or at least someone that has a good chance of being a champion someday. I don’t see Wolak as ever being a champion. He’s decent fighter, but I don’t think he’s going to be winning any titles. The power, the speed and the boxing ability just isn’t there for Wolak. I don’t care if they match him with Foreman or Clottey, I don’t see this as being worthy of putting it right before the main event. The card always is suspect in my eyes because what is Cotto doing fighting an old guy like Mayorga? If he’s going to fight him, then I don’t see how you can charge people to see this. To me, Cotto-Mayorga is an ESPN fight and nothing more.