By Mark Vester
WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik is a big puncher. He usually knocks his opponents out in brutal fashion. So brutal that he thinks they are never the same again. One of those fighters is Jermain Taylor. In their first fight in 2007, Pavlik came off the floor to knock Taylor out in seven rounds. The knockout saw Pavlik unload with power shots as Taylor was trapped against the ropes. Taylor was out cold as he slumped to the mat and the ref waved off the fight.
Since the loss, Taylor has never been the same again and went 1-3. He withdrew from the ongoing Super Six super middleweight tournament after suffering a bad knockout in the first stage against Arthur Abraham.
“A lot of top people say the knockouts changed their careers,” Pavlik told The Vindicator. “I’ve definitely seen a change. And they haven’t been the same. You look at Taylor — the [Carl] Froch fight, he was winning that fight up until the last round. Even when he got dropped, he could have took another knee and he was up so far on the scorecards, he could have still won the fight.
“And with him and Abraham, past the sixth round, he went into survival mode, like he said ‘I don’t want to get knocked out.’ And I think that’s maybe from when I fought him.”
Pavlik told the paper he doesn’t get enough credit for the way he wins his fights. A decision is not good enough. Pavlik wants to end every title defense with a knockout. He faces WBC junior middleweight champion Sergio Martinez on April 17 at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.
“Most of your top fighters go in there [in their mandatory defenses] and go 12 rounds with them and lose some rounds,” Pavlik said. “I went in there and stopped them, like I was supposed to.”
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