By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (37-2, 32 KO’s) is going to be getting the help of nutrionist Victor Conte to help revive Pavlik’s sinking career. Pavlik hasn’t fought since last May, and barely beat fringe super middleweight contender Alfonso Lopez by a 10 round decision.

It seems like Conte isn’t really what Pavlik is in most need of right now. No doubt Pavlik does need a nutritionist to help him plan his meals to keep him from eating his way into the cruiserweight division, but Pavlik’s problems are more related to his limited boxing skills. He’s now fighting at super middleweight against fighters with superb boxing skills.

Pavlik no longer has the size advantage over these guys like he did when he was fighting at middleweight, and that’s going to be a huge problem for him as he tries to revive his career. It’s a good thing that Pavlik want’s a nutritionist but unless Conte is going to design a diet that can get Pavlik back to 160, I don’t see it really helping him any.

Pavlik will be in over his head at 168 when he’s put in with guys like Mikkel Kessler, Andre Ward, Lucian Bute and Carl Froch. It’ll take one one-sided loss to one of these guys to put Pavlik on skid row to where he’s just ignored by the rest of them.

Pavlik was already exposed by an aging Bernard Hopkins and Sergio Martinez not too long ago. Another loss will be a crushing blow to Pavlik’s career and it’ll be hard for him to come back from that. A lot of boxing fans already see Pavlik as a shot fighter and it’s hard to disagree with that belief when you saw how badly Pavlik struggled against little known Lopez. Pavlik is really going nowhere fast at super middleweight and his only chance is go try and drop weight to get back to middleweight.

There’s talk of Pavlik changing trainers from Jack Loew to someone else. I don’t see this any being enough of a move to really help Pavlik’s career. Pavlik’s problems are more related to his limited skills and him fighting out of his weight class than it is with Loew. Pavlik is about as good as he can be under any trainer and simply needs to get his diet under control so that he can move back down to 160. That’s only weight class where Pavlik has any chance of competing.