By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-2, 32 KO’s) has been given a choice spot on the May 7th Manny Pacquiao vs. Shane Mosley undercard by his promoter Bob Arum for a bout that will be taking place at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The 28-year-old Pavlik still doesn’t have an opponent slated for the scheduled 10 round fight. Their looking for a super middleweight, because Pavlik says he won’t be fighting at middleweight any longer due the huge problems making the weight. Pavlik has filled out and walks around in the low 190s when not fighting.

Currently, Pavlik is reported to be weighing 193 and has three months to lose the weight to get down to 168 by 5/7. Don’t expect Pavlik to take off all the weight. He’ll likely take off 10 pounds and then lose the last 15 pounds by ridding himself of water weight just before the weigh-in. Pavlik will likely be in the low 180s when he fights whoever gets picked out for him.

Pavlik hasn’t fought since losing to Sergio Martinez last year in April in a 12 round decision loss. Pavlik was left a bloody mess and fought poorly through most of the fight, looking slow and sluggish. He weighed in the 170s for the 160 pound fight.

During January, Pavlik spent three weeks in the Betty Ford Center to treat an alcohol problem. Pavlik apparently has his alcohol problem licked. It’s unclear whether it was more of casual thing or something serious. Pavlik had this to say about his drinking issues in an article at vindy.com – “I showed that I don’t need it. When I got in training, I was in training. It’s easy to sit back and say I lost because I was partying and that would make me look better, but that’s not the truth. Drinking, in my opinion, never affected my fights.”

Pavlik is probably correct. He only lost to Bernard Hopkins and Sergio Martinez, and the reason he lost those fights appear to be more because of his style of fighting more than anything else. Pavlik simply met better overall fighters than him and couldn’t make the needed adjustments to beat them. That likely won’t change with him fighting at super middleweight and rid of his alcohol problems.

Pavlik needs to change his game if he wants to beat fighters like Hopkins and Martinez. Obviously, Pavlik will probably never fight those guys again, but there are plenty of similar fighters in the super middleweight division. Pavlik will continue to have problems unless he makes some adjustments with his fighting style.