American Boxing needs another Kelly Pavlik.

Damn i miss Kelly Pavlik or at least Pavlik circa 2007 before his drink and drug problems started as that guy was a fighting machine and had no quit in him.

Pavlik had 3 action classics in 2007 against Jose Luis Zertuche, Edison Miranda and Jermain Taylor and was a fairly big underdog against the latter two.

Kelly was a dynamic Middleweight who always brought excitement and entertainment plus could deliver some amazing KO's too.

He was also a great poster boy for American boxing, someone that the average joe could relate to and hey it didn't hurt he was a white boy from a place like Youngstown.

Kelly is still on 31 years old but his career is almost certainly over since he retired last year, it's a shame as American Boxing could do with another Pavlik to bring the kind of entertainment that non Americans like GGG, Kovalev, Provodnikov, Stevenson and Matthysse are bringing to boxing at the moment.

These are highlights of his great 2007 run.

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Agreed.

The way he came back from that 2nd round was amazing.

His fight with Edison Miranda is also a fave of mine.

I'll always be a fan of Pavlik for his run to the Middleweight crown, had he managed to hold it together a bit better he may have become something special.

 

I once went to Youngstown and it was as depressed and decimated as i'd heard, Pavlik was aptly named "Ghost" as he came from what had become an American ghost town.

Pavlik represented Youngstown's revival and telling the rest of America it wasn't quite dead yet, unfortunately carrying the hopes and dreams of a whole town on your shoulders must have weighed heavily on his shoulders and ultimately caused Kelly to find solace in drink and drugs which led to his fall from Champion to an ex one.

His run as Champion may have been short but American boxing could sure do with a few more Kelly Pavliks right now.

 

The fight with Hopkins was only made because Freddie Roach told Arum that Hopkins didn't have it any more after he trained him for the Calzaghe fight, which was the one before Pavlik fought him.

Oh how wrong Freddie was!

If only they'd made the Abraham fight instead of the Hopkins one, things may have turned out differently although Pavlik was probably already hitting the booze hard long before he stepped in the ring with Bhops.