By Rick Reeno
In the opinion of George Peterson, trainer/manager of Paul Williams, former middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik needs to leave the middleweight division behind, and immediately move up to 168-pounds. On Saturday at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, Sergio Martinez won a marvelous twelve round decision over Pavlik to capture the WBO/WBC middleweight titles. According to several sources, Pavlik struggled more than usual to make the weight. He weighed in at 159.5 on Friday, but weighed nearly twenty pounds more, at 178-pounds, by fight time.
Peterson, with Paul Williams by his side, traveled to Boardwalk Hall to watch the fight from ringside. Both trainer and fighter had picked Martinez to pull off the upset. According to Pavlik, he plans to exercise the rematch clause. Peterson is strongly advising Pavlik to forget about a rematch because the end result would be the same.
"If Kelly Pavlik is smart, he will leave the middleweight division. That would not be a smart move because he would take another loss and then he would become an opponent. He already has two losses. The money changes every time you lose. He needs to go to super middleweight, where the guys are slower and bigger and I could him being in a more challenging situation there, than at 160," Peterson told BoxingScene.com.
"It was easy picking the winner of that fight. If anyone had any boxing knowledge at all, they knew who would win that fight. Pavlik is a basic fighter. He sets a pattern and fights with that pattern, but he's no competition for fighters like Martinez. There was no reason for him to take a beating such as he did. He needed to throw that right [hand] two weeks earlier to hit Martinez with it. By the time he threw it, Martinez could have went to McDonalds and came back."
When Pavlik suffered his first career loss to Bernard Hopkins, in 2008, he was troubled with Hopkins' movement and faster hands. The same scenario played out in the loss to Martinez. Pavlik does not have the physical ability to deal with fighters who possess fast reflexes, says Peterson to BoxingScene.
"Pavlik is a basic one-two fighter. The only reason he has been as successful as he's been is because he's been fighting guys with absolutely no movement and they had no idea on how to get away from a one-two fighter. I knew the speed and accumulation of punches [of Martinez] was going to pick him apart. It's a good thing [for Pavlik] that Martinez pulled the trigger when he did, in the eight round. If he would have done it half a round earlier, Pavlik would have really been in bad shape," Peterson said.
"And I'll tell you this. He got both losses from trying to avoid Paul Williams. They refused to fight us [in 2008] and fought Bernard Hopkins and got that butt spanked. They avoided us again with the excuses [in 2009] and Martinez spanked that butt."
After a rocky start, Pavlik managed to adjust by picking up the pace and began to win some of the middle rounds. Peterson didn't see it in the same light. He saw Pavik playing right into Martinez's strategy.
"I knew what Martinez was doing. I saw that Martinez was touching him like he wanted to touch him. I thought Martinez would take off for a couple of rounds and then come back. Martinez knew he couldn't go at that pace for a full twelve rounds," Peterson said.
Paul Williams is scheduled to fight Kermit Cintron in a junior middleweight contest on May 8. Provided Williams wins, Peterson would immediately look for a rematch with Martinez. Last December, Williams won a close majority decision over Martinez at middleweight. Martinez was a late replacement for Pavlik, who withdrew with a staph infection in his hand. Williams-Martinez had fireworks from start to finish, with both fighters exchanging knockdowns in the first round and going to war for the next eleven.
"We were there [at Boardwalk Hall] to let it be known that we are not climbing under a rock. We wanted the winner of that particular event. I've got to give Martinez credit. He fought a great fight. Martinez will always represent. I don't see anybody out there who can do anything to Sergio Martinez, but Paul Williams. Martinez is here and he's going to be there for a while, but so is Paul Williams," Peterson said.
"The next time, we'll have eight weeks to train instead of three weeks. Martinez is a nice guy and we respect him and hope he'll be a champ for a long time. He was courageous enough to step up to fight Paul the first time and I think he'll do it again. I don't think he's going to make any of these excuses like we've heard before."