Kelly Pavlik, Top Rank Career Meeting is Still on Schedule

By Keith Idec

NEW YORK — Kelly Pavlik was expected to arrive in Manhattan on Thursday night for a meeting sometime Friday with his promoters at Top Rank Inc.

The sit-down will mark the former middleweight champion’s first face-to-face meeting with promoter Bob Arum since Pavlik abruptly withdrew from a tune-up fight against Darryl Cunningham 2½ months ago. Pavlik reportedly was upset about his $50,000 purse for facing Cunningham and a proposed $1.35 million guarantee for challenging IBF super middleweight champ Lucian Bute in a fight that was tentatively scheduled for Nov. 5.

He has since informed manager Cameron Dunkin that he regrets the August incident and wants to return to the ring as soon as possible.

“He’s going to have a meeting with Bob and me and [Top Rank president] Todd [duBoef] and his dad [Mike],” Dunkin said. “We’re going to sit down and we’re going to talk. We’re going to come up with a schedule for him, a game plan and hopefully we’ll get him going again.”

Pavlik is not expected to fight again until sometime early in 2012. The 29-year-old Pavlik has fought only once since he lost the WBC and WBO middleweight titles to Sergio Martinez 18 months ago in Atlantic City.

Pavlik (37-2, 32 KOs) withdrew from a super middleweight fight against Brian Vera that was scheduled for Nov. 13 on the Manny Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito undercard in Arlington, Texas. He subsequently entered a Southern California rehabilitation center for alcohol abuse.

Pavlik returned to training following two months of treatment and scored an unimpressive majority decision victory over Alfonso Lopez in a 10-round super middleweight fight on the Pacquiao-Shane Mosley undercard May 7 in Las Vegas.

That pedestrian performance prompted Pavlik (37-2, 32 KOs) to take a tune-up fight against Cunningham (23-2, 10 KOs), a left-handed fighter from Detroit, on Aug. 5 in Pavlik’s native Youngstown, Ohio. That low-profile fight was supposed to help prepare Pavlik for facing Bute (29-0, 24 KOs), a much more talented southpaw.

Once Pavlik pulled out of those two fights, Bute agreed to fight former undisputed light heavyweight champ Glen Johnson (51-15-2, 35 KOs) on Nov. 5 in Quebec City.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com.