Pavlik vs. Abraham Pushed Back To December, January
By Mark Vester
Top Rank's Bob Arum has gone on the record about the postponement of Kelly Pavlik's defense of the WBC/WBO middleweight titles. Pavlik was scheduled to face Sergio Mora on June 27 at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Last week Top Rank announced that it was postponing the fight because Pavlik needed more time to heal a staph infection that developed in his hand.
During a recent interview with hometown paper The Vindicator, Pavlik said that he was ready, willing and able to fight Mora. Pavlik claimed to have been given a clean bill of health to move forward with the fight. Father and co-manager Mike Pavlik said that he signed and sent back the contracts for the Mora fight a week ago. The conflicting stories left a mystery out there.
Arum spoke with Pavlik's hometown paper and said the fight was pushed back because he didn't receive Pavlik's medical documents in time to finalize the June 27 card.
“There are millions of dollars involved and other fighters and we didn’t want to jerk anyone around,” said Arum. “We didn’t want to go through with it without having a clear report on the status of his hand.”
“We didn’t want to do everything at the last minute. We ran out of time to get the commercials and the other materials to the cable systems. We’re just postponing the event six weeks,” he said. “Hopefully we can get a medical report saying he’s good enough to fight and that he’s 100 percent OK. Once we get that, we’ll reschedule the event. It’s no big deal.”
If Pavlik fights Mora in September, it pushed back the possible fight between Pavlik and IBF champion Arthur Abraham, which was being eyed for November of this year. Arum said the fight can still happen and will more than likely get pushed to December or January of next year.
The Mora fight was expected to be a precursor to a November showdown with IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham.
“I don’t think it affects it at all. We can still put that fight on in December or January,” Arum said.
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