By Mark Vester

The new face of the middleweight division, Kelly Pavlik (30-0, 27KOs), is not impressed with some of the competition at 160-pounds.

During a recent interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal , Pavlik told the paper that middleweight champ Jermain Taylor is avoiding fighters that have good punching power. He feels Taylor is ducking him, but also appears to be confident that sooner or later Taylor will eventually have to face him in the ring. 

"Jermain is a big guy and he's out there looking to fight guys who can't punch," Pavlik said. "He's fought junior middleweights who moved up and weren't really a threat to him. He's being careful who he fights."

Winky Wright, who meets Bernard Hopkins at 170-pounds in July, is another fighter that Pavlik does not see being able to beat the bigger middleweight fighters like himself and Edison Miranda (28-1, 24KOs). Taylor has a habit of letting smaller fighters back him up, a habit that Pavlik says will haunt him when he meets a big puncher.

"They can say what they want, but Winky Wright wouldn't beat most legitimate middleweights. He doesn't have the power to keep them off him. But he backed Jermain up all night when they fought. Kassim Ouma couldn't knock out welterweights, and he had Jermain going backward. What's he going to do when he meets a puncher?"

Pavlik and Miranda, the two biggest punchers in the middleweight division, will face off in a winner takes all showdown in July. The date, nor the venue has been set, but HBO will televise the event. The winner hopes to land a shot at Taylor, who is scheduled to fight Contender star Sergio Mora. Should Taylor beat Mora, a fight with Roy Jones, Jr. at 170 pounds is said to be a possibility.