Is Kelly Pavlik still in his prime?

Is Pavlik in his prime? No, I don't believe he is.

How do I rate him as a puncher? Hard to say, since he only officially stepped up to the plate at SMW 4 fights ago, so it's hard to say where he fits amongst Froch/Stevenson/Kessler/Bute.

How much threat does he pose to Ward compared to other 168lbers? Maybe the same, since none of them pose a threat right now.

 

Damn right his in his prime! He's in his prime drunken stupor days.

 

I know plus they are actually active in the division.

 

Long removed.

 

I am interested.

 

You need to educate yourself on money issues. Ward does NOT represent a big pay day for Pavlik. The popular story that Pavlik took Ward to "Cash Out" doesn't even rise to fairy tale status.

There are a ton of posters on ESB who can watch a fight, and afterward, have no idea what they just saw. Until you called Rosinsky a stiff, and implied that Pavlik looked bad in that fight, I had no idea that you were one of them.

 

Ironically, Will Rosinsky said the opposite. He said Kelly was quicker than he thought, but not as heavy handed as he thought.

 

Will Rosinsky is decent. I'm somewhat interested in how his career goes, though I tend to doubt he has a major belt in his future. Lopez, Sigmon, and Jaco though are all club-fighter level guys though.

 

I don't put much emphasis on Lopez because there was already serious trouble in the Pavlik camp when that fight happened. Jaco was supposed to be an easy fight, and turned out to be to easy. That was one of the reasons for the Sigmon fight, but it was also "personal." Pavlik had no intention of blasting Sigmon out in a round or two. He made it perfectly clear that he planned on torturing him for several rounds, and that's what he did.

Pavlik and Rosinski both deserve their props for taking that fight on 2 weeks notice. The HBO crew deserves a pay-cut for the way they called it. At no time was Rosinski ever "in the fight." Rosinski held his own with Rodriquez who is supposedly a serious up and comer. You could debate an odd round here and there, but in essence, Pavlik dominated Rosinski.

Here's where I think people get it wrong. Pavlik did not charge out to center ring and start trying to tear Will's head off. He calmly and patiently won rounds: round, after round, after round. For some bizarre reason people seem to think that small changes in strategy and tactics mean a fighter has faded. What it really means is that a fighter is still capable of learning and improving.

As far as Rosinki's future, I would like to see him raise holy hell until he gets a rematch with Rodriguez.

 

This is an interesting point but it also raises a serious question. Kelly has been willing to carry fighters before would step on it by the end for the KO. Was he 'content' to just do some work in this fight and let it go the distance?

 

For the underlined portion, it's not just "change in strategies and tactics" that people think Pavlik is faded. I think we can all agree that Pavlik's best year in the sport(by miles and miles and miles) was 2007. And quite frankly, he hasn't done much of anything since then, more of the buzz around him in recent years are fights that fell through (Williams, Bute) or fights that he lost. Here's what has happened with Pavlik since 2007.

Staph infection/near death experience
Alcoholism
Beatdown by Hopkins
Beatdown by Martinez(it was an 8-4 decision, but one guy got beatdown and the other guy didn't).
His best wins during that time (past 5 years) have been Rubio and Rosinsky.

You usually don't get better from those things and you usually drop off. And he hasn't had the kind of performance that makes you think he's on the verge of being on the top of the world again.

Now, speaking in generalities, this is how I would characterize Pavlik during his prime (2007-08):

He was a giant middleweight that towered over his opponents, had great reach advantages, had a very basic and fundamental skill set, had a very high work rate combined with his power, and he had a very good chin. All of these attributes combined together would see him through 99% of his middleweight fights. It's like Paul Williams at welterweight. Was Paul a perfect boxer? No. Did he have flaws? Absolutely. However, if you were a welterweight and Paul was across the ring from you, you have problems on your hands. And so it is with Pavlik at MW.

So, now that he's a SMW, he's no longer a HUGE middleweight, he's another one of the big guys. He still probably has his chin, but his work rate has declined (I'm sorry, you can't pick and choose which fights to focus on for what reason, you have to view them altogether) and I don't believe his power has the same effect at SMW as it did at MW.

Now, the problem with his bouts with Jaco, Lopez, Sigmon, and Rosinsky is you can't really take much away from any of them. Will Rosinsky's best fight was when judges filled out their scorecards before the fight against Rodriguez, who is also only a prospect, and we don't know if either of them will go on to accomplish anything of note...they're still in the prospect stages fighting guys like Escalara and Otis Griffin....and that's Pavlik's best opponent since his official SMW campaign. Let's be honest, if it was Karoly Balzsay or Dimitri Sartison fighting consecutive fights of Lopez, Jaco, and Sigmon, and Rosinsky people would be screaming that they were protected eurobums anytime the topic would be brought up. And I don't think it's out of the question that Balzsay and Sartison could run through those 4 fighters and be 4-0 with 2 KOS. Basically, in those 4 fights, what he's shown is that he's probably still generally better than someone like Edwin Rodriguez at the moment.

I guess what I'm saying is, there's a lot more reason to suspect Pavlik is on the slide than he is still in his prime, and it's hard to look at those past 4 fights and believe he's still in his prime. Now, is he ad******g his game a little bit? Yep. He certainly is. However, guys like Kessler and Abraham have also shown some adjustments, but no one thinks that they're in their prime anymore.

 

Pavlik at his best was some years ago, but all he has to do is train hard and live healthy and he can be back in that kind of form. At 30 years old a person is very close to their physical prime. Unless they have taken to many punches and have neurological damage. Pavlik has never been hurt that bad and has not been in a real tough fight for a long time.

 

Whatever helps you sleep at night. :smooch