By Dan Ambrose: If you were counting on former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (36-2, 32 KO’s) at least fighting a recognizable 2nd or 3rd tier opponent on the Manny Pacquiao vs. Shane Mosley undercard on May 7th, I’m sorry to disappoint you but it’s probably going to be a little known fighter by the name of Alfonso Lopez (21-0, 16 KO’s) that winds up as Pavlik’s opponent for the scheduled 10 round bout.

Lopez is a 28-year-old super middleweight with exactly one recognizable opponent on his resume in journeyman Ruben Williams. The rest of Lopez’s opponents are obscure fighters. As such, you can pretty much see this as a fighter with a record much less impressive than the 21-0 that Lopez is sporting. He’s clearly not someone that will be brought in to give Pavlik any problems.

Besides Lopez, Bryan Vera and Joe Spina are being considered for Pavlik’s next fight, according to Ring Magazine. Don’t count on either of them getting selected though, because it seems that Lopez is the one that they’re looking at the most. Vera might actually be good enough to beat Pavlik at this point, so the chances aren’t good that he’s going to get a shot. Spina is also someone that would give Pavlik a great deal of problems because he likes to slug and we don’t know what Pavlik is going to have after his beating in his last fight against Sergio Martinez and the long time away from the ring.

Pavlik hasn’t fought since April 2010. He’s now moving up to super middleweight because he can’t make 160 anymore. That’s bad news for Pavlik because he’s going to have serious problems against the better skilled fighters in the super middleweight division. Pavlik did well in the weakened middleweight division because the talent was so god awful poor. However, at super middleweight the best I can see of Pavlik is to perhaps win a paper title against the WBO champ Robert Stieglitz.

That’s probably the best Pavlik can hope for because I can’t see him ever beating IBF champion Lucian Bute, WBC title holder Carl Froch or WBC champion Andre Ward. I see each one of them as being a level above Pavlik. My guess is once Pavlik starts taking losses to these guys or the top contenders, he’ll opt to do what he has to do to get back down to 160 and fight in the weak middleweight division once again.