By Dan Ambrose: Well, it looks as if former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (37-2, 32 KO’s) decided to pull out of Saturday’s fight against little known Darryl Cunningham due to the money not being right for the fight. According to Youngstown’s WFMJ-Channel 21, the 29-year-old Pavlik wasn’t pleased with the little money he was to receive for the Cunningham fight.

But addition to that, Pavlik is now saying he won’t be fighting IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute in November. The Cunningham fight was supposed to be a tune-up for Pavlik to get him ready for the Bute fight. But that’s not happening now.

Here’s what Pavlik had to say:

“The fight [Cunningham] is not going to happen and the Bute fight is not going to happen. I’m not going to fight a southpaw for peanuts.”

According to Ringtv, Pavlik is angry after learning that former super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler was offered more money to fight Bute than Pavlik. Unfortunately, the Cunningham fight had to go as well, because it was part of the same deal to fight Bute. Kessler was reportedly offered $3.5 million compared to Pavlik’s $1.1 million.

It’s not all that strange that Kessler would be offered more money given that he won his last fight against Carl Froch in the Super Six tournament in a huge fight, and hasn’t looked terrible in his last couple of fights. Kessler is a major player in the super middleweight division right now, and we don’t really know what Pavlik can in this division. Kessler has both power and great boxing skills, whereas Pavlik is more of a slugger that has problems against boxer/punchers.