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Joe Calzaghe was 5,000 miles away from Las Vegas, but his interest in the rematch between Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor was greater than that of most people at ringside.
The 35-year-old super middleweight champion will challenge Bernard Hopkins for the world light heavyweight title on April 19, but Calzaghe's keeping his super middleweight belts.
There are only a select group of fighters whom Calzaghe wishes to encounter at this stage of his career. As he sat in the early morning watching the action taking place at the MGM Grand, he acknowledged that the winner of the Pavlik-Taylor rematch would be one of them.
"I'm only stepping up to light heavyweight because Hopkins wouldn't come down to super middleweight and I've always wanted to be a champion at two weights," the native of Wales explained. "I'd move back down again to fight either Pavlik or Taylor as either one would be a big fight."
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Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor
Chris Farina/Top Rank
Kelly Pavlik carried 164 pounds with ease. So what's stopping him from a move up to 168?
Even though Pavlik, who defeated Taylor by unanimous decision at a catchweight of 166 pounds, intends to return to 160 to face either Ireland's John Duddy or the faded remnants of Felix Trinidad in June, a potential meeting with Calzaghe would be fascinating.
Weighing within four pounds of the super middleweight limit, Pavlik still looked strong and his 6-foot-2 frame could carry another four pounds easily. Down the stretch, he demonstrated superior stamina and his ability to keep coming a worn-down Taylor's resolve.
Through 10 rounds, Calzaghe saw it close but he gave the last two to Pavlik. Calzaghe was impressed by Pavlik's relentlessness and his ability to adapt to a different kind of challenge than Taylor posed for him five months ago.
"Pavlik's a good champion and, yes, I'm impressed by him. He comes to fight and I like his no-nonsense style," Calzaghe explained. "In the first fight with Taylor, he showed great heart after being floored heavily in the second round and he came back to secure an exciting win. The rematch was more of a thinking fight and Pavlik showed that he could box a bit. Taylor's tactic was to sit back and box more and Pavlik dealt well with that and got a win that I thought he deserved. He's a young kid, too, and he'll get better but he's doing fine just now."
Pavlik's dilemma is that there are no compelling challenges at 160. His chances of unifying the alphabet belts are slim, given that Germany's Felix Sturm and German-based Armenian Arthur Abraham hold two of them.
Those would be interesting fights: Sturm pushed Oscar De La Hoya to the precipice of an embarrassing defeat just three months prior to De La Hoya's knockout by Hopkins; Abraham is probably the better of the two, but he has boxed only once outside of Germany.
"From my own experience of trying to get a fight for many years with another German, Sven Ottke [who held a title at super middleweight for six years], I can assure Pavlik that he'll struggle to get a fight with either Abraham or Sturm," Calzaghe insisted. "Neither Ottke nor his promoter [Wilfried Sauerland] wanted to know."
So where can Pavlik go? Duddy is brave and he is also an attraction; he has built up a massive following in New York, having moved to the Big Apple from his native Derry. But Duddy's defense is too porous to leave him with a realistic chance of toppling Pavlik. Instead, the worry is that he could sustain a bad beating.
Trinidad is a fighter on the slide whose inactivity has created the illusion that he might still have something to offer at 35 years old. Surprisingly, many people were able to forget how ineffective he looked against Winky Wright in 2005 when he decided to come back last month to face Roy Jones, who was able to have his way with him.
Wright, Sebastian Sylvester, Javier Castillejo, Amin Asikainen, Randy Griffin and Raymond Joval -- all ranked in the top 10 at middleweight by The Ring -- represent a distinctly uninspiring group of challengers for Pavlik. A confrontation at super middleweight with Calzaghe -- should the Welshman beat Hopkins and continue his career -- makes sense.
"Pavlik was able to grind it out and in the end he managed to bully Taylor a bit," Calzaghe said. "There were cracking body shots which seemed to take the wind out of Jermain."
Calzaghe feels he already has the blueprint to beat Pavlik.
"He's a bit crude, Pavlik, and doesn't do anything exceptional," Calzaghe said. "I'd stop him from jabbing with my movement and my workrate would wear him down late on. I don't see [Pavlik] beating Mikkel Kessler [whom Calzaghe defeated in November] because he wouldn't have the punching power to hurt him but I think he could be effective at super middle. He showed that last night [by] boxing just a few pounds under the super middleweight limit."
If Pavlik decides to go all the way, Calzaghe will be waiting.
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