By Dan Ambrose: Former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik shot down the idea of fighting little known fighter Scott Sigmon on April 14th, according to Vindy.com. Instead, Pavlik hopes to be fighting again on March 17th against an opponent to be named later. Hopefully, Pavlik fights someone better known than Sigmon because I never heard of that fighter before and isn’t that impressive.

Pavlik hasn’t fought since last May when he defeated Alfonso Lopez by a 10 round majority decision. His new trainer Robert Garcia believes that Pavlik can return to the middleweight division rather than fighting at super middleweight because Pavlik reported to training camp with Garcia weighing only 173 pounds. He can easily shed some of that weight and then dehydrated to make 160, where he would have a huge advantage over the mostly weak opposition in that weight class.

You know it’s a weak weight class when you have a champion like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. holding down the WBC title. Pavlik may get a chance at fighting Chavez Jr. if Pavlik can win two of his tune-up bouts and look good in doing so. He shares the same Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who said recently that if Pavlik looks good in his next two fights, he’ll go ahead and put that fight together.

However, Chavez Jr. will have to get at least one fight in before then against possibly Martin Murray or Andy Lee. Either of those would be tough fights for Chavez Jr. and he could lose his World Boxing Council strap even before Arum gets a chance to match him against Pavlik. Right now, you would have to pick Pavlik by a knockout if he were to fight Chavez Jr. by the way Chavez Jr. has looked in his last four bouts. He looks like nothing special and his trainer Freddie Roach doesn’t seem to be making any substantial improvements in his game. The only thing that stands out about Chavez Jr. is his ability to take off tremendous amounts of water weight to make 160, followed by him putting it back on after rehydrating and coming into his fights weighing over 180. It’s extremely rare to have a fighter that does this over and over like Chavez Jr. and it’s difficult to understand how he’s doing it without being weakened.