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About to be 28, Pavlik’s days as middleweight dwindling
By Joe Scalzo
Youngstown
For much of his career, Kelly Pavlik used his down time between fights as, well, down time.
“I’d sit around and eat and stay loose,” he said.
Not anymore.
With his 28th birthday and his 38th career fight both looming in April, Pavlik knows his time at middleweight is dwindling.
“That weight’s getting hard,” he admitted. “Every year, it gets harder and harder to get to 160 pounds and it’s starting to get very draining.”
At 6-foot-21‚Ñ2, Pavlik has always been one of the biggest fighters in the middleweight division. By comparison, WBA champion Felix Sturm is 5-111‚Ñ2 and IBF champ Sebastian Sylvester is 5-71‚Ñ2.
After beating Miguel Espino in December, Pavlik spent several weeks letting his injured left hand get back to 100 percent. But he also hit the weight room and played basketball to keep in shape before training camp began.
Consequently, Pavlik started camp much thicker than usual, which was one of the reasons he has opted to spend a month in Florida. Pavlik attended Saturday’s Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey bout. He’ll fly to Florida this week to continue training camp before flying back on April 10.
But the weight is just one problem with the division.
The other is the lack of big names — and big fights — available.
Sturm and Sylvester are both Germans with little name recognition in the United States. Other than Pavlik, Paul Williams probably holds the biggest name in division but a Pavlik-Williams bout seems doubtful at this point due to bad blood on both sides.
Winky Wright recently signed with Pavlik’s promotion company, Top Rank Boxing, but at age 38, his best days are behind him.
Super middleweight, on the other hand, has several enticing options, led by former IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham, who vacated his title last year to compete in Showtime’s “Super Six” tournament. Former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, who lost his belts to Pavlik in 2007, also competed in the tournament before withdrawing after a loss to Abraham.
“When I was fighting for a world [middleweight] title, you had guys like [Edison] Miranda, Taylor, Abraham; it was packed with fighters,” said Pavlik. “Now it’s kind of petering out. You see a lot of guys bouncing up to super middleweight.”
Although Pavlik knows he can’t look past his upcoming opponent, Sergio Martinez, he also admits he’s started to think about making the jump to 168 pounds. Ideally, he’ll position himself to fight the winner of the Showtime tournament.
“Hopefully I can make two or three more fights at middleweight,” he said. “After that, I’ll bang it out with the super middleweights.”