By Eric Thomas: I’ve never been one to question the wisdom of WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, but I think he’s made a mistake in choosing Paul Williams as his next opponent on October 3rd in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Pavlik, 27, appears to be in denial about his lopsided loss to Bernard Hopkins last October.

Pavlik hasn’t changed a thing about his defense and is still one of the most hittable fighters in boxing. Hopkins exposed Pavlik’s lack of boxing skills for everyone to see by outclassing him and beating him by a one-sided 12 round decision.

Pavlik showed that he has a lot of power, but as far as hand speed, lateral movement and ring savvy, Pavlik is like a big kid. That’s the problem. Pavlik doesn’t have the ability to be fighting someone like Paul Williams, who will be throwing 100 punchers per round when they meet up on October 3rd.

Williams is a lot better than any fighter that Pavlik has fought before with the exception of Hopkins. This isn’t going to be the case where Pavlik will be able to walk his opponent down and bury them with power shots, because Williams has learned to use lateral movement to avoid primitive come forward fighters like Pavlik.

This fight is going to be like target practice with Williams using Pavlik’s head as a big bull’s-eye to land his combinations. Pavlik does well when he has time to get his shots off. He’s a methodical type of a fighter who sets up his offense in the same way each time with jabs and right hands.

However, Williams won’t let Pavlik set up his offense and will keep him from getting his shots off by throwing loads of punches. No doubt, Pavlik will be able to land a lot of his punches against Williams, but it may not be enough because Pavlik will likely be too busy trying to block all the punches that Williams will be throwing back at him.

This isn’t going to be a fight like Pavlik’s bout against Edison Miranda where Kelly was able to stand toe-to-toe with Miranda for seven rounds blasting Miranda with huge shots. Williams will be moving constantly and using angles against the one-dimensional Pavlik and likely giving him huge problems. Miranda couldn’t fight going backwards light Williams can nor could he throw nearly as many shots as Williams will be throwing in the fight.

Pavlik’s only chance in this fight is if he can pin Williams to the ropes like he did with Miranda and unload on him with a series of punches for 30 uninterrupted seconds. If Williams is foolish enough to try and slug with Pavlik for an extended amount of time, I can see Pavlik hurting Williams and possibly taking him out.

Williams hasn’t been hurt before, and it’s unclear whether he knows what to do if he finds himself in that situation. Pavlik hits hard enough to put Williams in trouble at any time in the fight, so Williams is going to have to be careful about getting involved with exchanging shots with Pavlik.

It’s the right hands from Pavlik that Williams has to be careful about, because that’s Kelly’s bread and butter punch. He doesn’t have much of a left hand and mostly uses his right to land his big power shots.