By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-2, 32 KO’s) will be making a comeback on May 7th in a super middleweight bout against Alfonso Lopez (21-0, 16 KO’s) in a fight that will be taking place on the undercard of the Manny Pacquiao vs. Shane Mosley bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Although the 28-year-old Pavlik will now be fighting at super middleweight against someone he will likely knockout in the first few rounds, Pavlik’s chances of success at this weight class are incredibly slim because of how stacked the division is with talent. Pavlik is good enough to beat some of the fighters in the division but he’ll likely be over his head in fights against Andre Ward, Carl Froch and Andre Dirrell.
Pavlik could find himself getting beaten as soundly as he was in his loss to Bernard Hopkins in 2008 or his defeat at the hands of Sergio Martinez in his last fight in April 2010. However, Pavlik has one thing going for him that many others don’t – He fights for Bob Arum of Top Rank.
Arum is likely going to carefully match Pavlik against guys that he can beat and keep him away from the likes of Ward, Dirrell, Mikkel Kessler or Froch. Instead of Pavlik fighting those guys, we’ll very likely see him soon go after the weakest of the current super middleweight champions Robert Stieglitz, the WBO champion.
Pavlik can beat that guy, but then again so can a lot of other fighters in the super middleweight division. Arum will probably match Pavlik against Stieglitz and then Pavlik will end up as the new WBO paper champion. And like Stieglitz, we’ll see Pavlik facing guys like Enrique Ornelas, Eduard Gutknecht and Dimitri Sartison instead of guys that would likely whip Pavlik.
Look for Pavlik to be managed the same way that WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, who is being put in with guys like Yuri Foreman and Ricardo Mayorga rather than dangerous fighters such as Alfredo Angulo and Kermit Cintron.
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