Champ Pavlik eyes chance to prove naysayers wrong

After losing the first fight of his career, to Bernard Hopkins (right), Kelly Pavlik endured a wave of negative press. Anthony J. Causi/Icon SMI Chris Mannix's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Chris. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Chris Mannix on Twitter

Say you're Jack Shephard. You have been stranded on an island for months, far removed from civilization and cut off from all information relating to the outside world. Suddenly (and for the purposes of this example, recently) you're rescued. Big celebration. A couple of weeks later, after you reacclimatize yourself to eating fish out of a can and figure out how to play Nintendo Wii, you get an e-mail from a friend inviting you over to watch this weekend's Kelly Pavlik fight.

"Who's Kelly Pavlik?" you ask yourself.

So you do some research. You log onto Lexis-Nexis and you Google deep into the night. You read the recent clips and you listen to podcasts of talking heads. You e-mail your friend back. "Why would I want to see Kelly Pavlik?" you write. That guy stinks.

In less than five months, Pavlik has gone from the poster boy for American boxing to a virtually forgotten fighter. And it's all because of one loss. Not a string of losses, not a series of devastating knockouts. One loss -- a unanimous-decision defeat to Bernard Hopkins last October that sparked a wave of negative press for the 26-year-old Pavlik.

Was it a bad loss? Absolutely. Over the course of 12 rounds, Hopkins systematically destroyed Pavlik, beating him from pole-to-pole in every conceivable way. But it was one loss. Pavlik's first loss, no less. And it was at a weight (170 pounds) he had no business fighting at, and it didn't cost him his middleweight titles. Unfortunately, the real price turned out to be Pavlik's elite status in the minds of many of the boxing faithful.

"That's boxing for you," Pavlik's trainer, Jack Loew, said recently. "He lost a fight. It's not the end of the world. He's still the middleweight champ. And he's going to prove it in this next fight."

That opportunity will come Saturday night, when Pavlik will square off with Marco Antonio Rubio, the mandatory challenger for Pavlik's WBC and WBO middleweight belts, in a unique pay-per-view double-header. While Pavlik (34-1, 30 KOs) is preparing to face Rubio (43-4-1) in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, another fighter on the comeback trail, Miguel Cotto (32-1, 26 KOs), who suffered his first loss to Antonio Margarito last July, will be stepping into the ring in at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In the co-main event, Cotto will face Michael Jennings (34-1, 16 KOs) for the WBO welterweight title in a fight that will precede Pavlik's fight (Top Rank PPV, 9 p.m.).

"I'm really excited about this entire endeavor," said Top Rank promoter Bob Arum. "I think this is going to be an extremely enjoyable night for the fight fans to see two crowds from two really different cities."

For Pavlik, the goal isn't just to win; it's to win in an impressive fashion. In the weeks that followed the Hopkins fight, Pavlik heard the pundits claim that his power made him a one-trick pony. He read the countless stories mocking him for being such a stationary target. He knows that only a decisive victory will quiet the skeptics.

"I think it has to be a big win," said Pavlik. "Either a knockout or a really strong decision. My whole career's not over. Look at Hopkins. He has five losses and he's going to go down as one of the greatest boxers of all times. Look at [Oscar] De La Hoya and where he's at. That's what happens to great fighters. You bounce back."

Pavlik certainly has found the right opponent. Despite Rubio's No. 1-contender status, the 28-year-old is little more than a boxing journeyman who has spent most of his career fighting in Mexico or out-of-the-way U.S. locations like Cicero, Illinois, or Odessa, Texas. There is some pop behind his punches (37 of his wins have come by knockout), but Rubio's straight-ahead style is tailor made for Pavlik.

"I think it's a perfect fight to pick for us," said Loew. "I think that anybody that's willing to stand in front of somebody like Kelly, that can punch like he can, I mean that definitely plays into our hands."

A jaw-rattling, crowd-pleasing knockout won't mean much to Pavlik. Nor will it be of much consequence to Loew. Their confidence wasn't shaken. They didn't shed any tears after the Hopkins fight. They stewed on it for a week and moved on. But for the fickle fans and even-more-fickle media who have dismissed Pavlik from boxing's upper echelon, a quality win would put him back on the map.

Not that he ever really went anywhere to begin with.

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ROUND-BY-ROUND BLOG: Pavlik vs. Hopkins

ROUND-BY-ROUND BLOG: Cotto vs. Margarito