By Mark Vester
In a recent interview with The Vindicator, former middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (26-2, 32KOs) discussed his past problems with drinking and partying. He spent 60 days in the Ranch Recovery Center in Desert Hot Springs, Calif. and in January he spent 20 days in the Betty Ford Clinic.
“I was having too much fun, put it that way,” Pavlik. “I’ve been pro for 10 years now and I have a lot of things going on in my life and boxing’s not going to be there for the rest of my life. It kind of got to the point where I said, ‘I’ve got to get organized now and start settling down and paying attention to what I have going on.’”
Pavlik said his drinking and partying never affected any of his fights, including the two defeats on his record to Sergio Martinez and Bernard Hopkins.
“When I got in training, I was in training,” he said. “It’s easy to sit back and say I lost [the Bernard Hopkins fight] because I was partying and that would make me look better, but that’s not the truth. Drinking, in my opinion, never affected any of my fights.”
Pavlik is getting ready for an eight week training camp. He hopes to fight on the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley pay-per-view undercard on May 7 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.