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World Boxing Council (WBC) middleweight champion Kelly “The
Ghost” Pavlik has always been known to defy conventional wisdom.
When he was still an amateur boxer, Pavlik
rarely engaged a foe in a pre-fight stareout. Fight fans theorized
back then that Pavlik was too scared to fight. Pencil-thin, the
pale-skinned Pavlik was thought of as the typical white boy who
would be devoured alive by the big black fighters in the hood.
“They’d walk by him, point at him, and laugh,” recalled Mike
Pavlik, Kelly’s father who also doubles as his cook. “I’m not
kidding. The black kids would see Kelly and think they had it easy.
I guess you’d say it was a sort of reverse discrimination.”
Pavlik had to dig deep in his arsenal to prove
the soothsayers wrong. He turned pro in 2000 and came out smoking,
stopping his first 14 opponents. Critics, however, were quick to
claim that “The Ghost” was being fed with zombies.
It was not until May 2007 when boxing fans
started taking down notes. Pavlik took on the dangerous Edison
Miranda and knocked out the Colombian in seven rounds. Miranda came
to the fight with a record of 28-1 (24 knockouts) and the reputation
as the “Mike Tyson of the middleweights.”
Four months later, Pavlik showed that he can
really fight when he stopped the heavily-favored Jermain Taylor for
the WBC middleweight (160 pounds) title. Pavlik looked like a goner
when he kissed the canvas in the second round after taking a huge
right hand from Taylor. Pavlik miraculously survived the assault and
went on to knock Taylor cold with a big right of his own in the
seventh round. Taylor, who had wrested the title from Bernard
Hopkins, suffered his first defeat in 28 fights.
Pavlik earned a career-high $1.1 million for the
fight. Many thought the new champion who grew up in the secluded
hills of Youngstown, Ohio would celebrate his promotion to a higher
tax bracket by going on a shopping spree. Pavlik ended up using a
portion of his earnings to buy new tires for his old car.
Pavlik, 32-0 with 29 knockouts, has emerged as
one of the most exciting fighters in the punch-for-pay business.
Fight fans are now calling him the real-life “Rocky Balboa,” a
slugger who would wink at a tsunami and try flattening it with his
thunderous left hook.
Pavlik will return to action Sunday in a
highly-awaited rematch with Taylor in Las Vegas, Nevada. Taylor, who
has dropped veteran Emanuel Steward as his trainer for amateur
mentor Ozell Nelson, is promising to expose Pavlik for what he
really is—a fraud. The bout will take place at the catch weight of
166 pounds, which means that Pavlik will retain his WBC title even
if he loses.
Pavlik, who took up boxing after getting bored
with karate, is the favorite to prevail in the encore. Not a few
believe that the once-slick Taylor will find it difficult to
exorcise the memory of the harrowing defeat he suffered last year.
Even before he lost to Pavlik, Taylor’s skills, particularly his
defense, were already deteriorating. All of Taylor’s four
successful defenses of the WBC bauble ended on points; one (against
Winky Wright) even ended in a draw.
Taylor is talking tough, but Pavlik has already
shown what he is made of. The WBC champion is sticking to same
training regimen that includes honing his punching power by hitting
an oversized tire over 100 yards with a sledgehammer. “I was
watching Rocky and he was cutting down trees, and I wanted to do
what, but I didn’t think it would be safe to use an ax,” he
said.
Oh, as if to show how unconventional he is,
Pavlik hardly studies videotapes of his opponents.
“Kelly does not like watching tapes of
fighters,” confirmed Jack Loew, who has been training Pavlik since
he was 10 years old. “He has so much confidence in himself and his
ability, he’d fight Oscar De La Hoya tomorrow.”
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For comments, the writer can be reached at
atty_eduardo@ yahoo.com.
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