By Dan Ambrose: Moving up in weight to the super middleweight division, former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (37-2, 32 Ko’s) struggled to beat the little known, weak punching Alfonso Loez (21-1, 16 KO’s) by a 10 round majority decision last Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The final judges’ scores were 95-95, 98-92 and 99-91. I had the fight scored a 95-95, but if I was to give a win to either of them, I would have gone with Lopez. He threw more punches, landed more punches and threw the better combinations.

Indeed, Pavlik rarely threw combinations at all and was limited to mostly one shot at a time. The fact that Pavlik had to struggle to beat Lopez isn’t a good sign for Pavlik. Lopez is a decent fighter but not in the class of the upper level guys like Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler, Lucian Bute, Sakio Bika and Andre Dirrell. Those guys will give Pavlik all kinds of headaches with their power and in some cases, their movement and speed. Pavlik struggled badly with Lopez’s speed and movement. And Lopez exposed Pavlik’s in ability to fight on the inside by getting in close with him every round and shutting him down.

To be sure, Lopez didn’t show much on the inside either, but he did reveal that he was safe when he was in close and holding onto Pavlik. I had Lopez winning two of the first six rounds and then winning rounds seven through nine by out-working Pavlik. In the 10th, Pavlik put a lot of pressure on Lopez and seemed to have him slightly hurt. However, Pavlik wasn’t able to stop him and had to settle for a 10 round majority decision.

Pavlik moved up in weight because he can’t make the 160 pound middleweight limit anymore without struggling badly. However, I think he’s going to wish he had stayed at that weight once he starts getting beaten by the better fighters in the super middleweight division. I think Pavlik can beat the WBO super middleweight champion Roberto Stieglitz, as he’s the weakest of the champions. But that’s about it.

Unless Pavlik is steered towards that guy, he’s going to start suffering defeats one after another. His power isn’t that big of a deal at his weight and he still doesn’t throw combinations and can’t handle movement. Lopez exposed the same flaws in Pavlik’s game that Bernard Hopkins and Sergio Martinez did in beating him. I think we’re going to soon be seeing Pavlik turning into a gatekeeper type fighter. I think his days as a champion level fighter are pretty done unless he goes after the paper champion Stieglitz.