Kelly Pavlik Tries to Explain the Unfathomable

Three days after getting the beating of his life from 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins in a shocking upset, the still-middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik remains at a loss to explain what exactly transpired in Atlantic City on Saturday Night.

He tells Boxing Scene’s Mark Vester in this piece today that he had nothing in the ring against Hopkins and that his poor performance had little to do with Bernard’s celebrated experience, saying:

“It’s not that he’s that good… It has nothing to do with his athleticism or his craftiness. Jermain Taylor hit him at will. Calzaghe hit him at will. It’s just that I didn’t have anything ... It was just a bad night, an off night.”

In my recap of the Hopkins/Pavlik fight over at No Mas, though I showered Bernard with praise for what he had accomplished, I also noted Kelly’s sluggishness and made the point that the result of the fight seemed like it was more than just the product of Hopkins’ stunning rejuvenation. Fighters have two or three nights a year when they have to be at their very best, and if on one of those nights they’re just not feeling it, they’re in deep trouble indeed. Pavlik very clearly was not all there against Hopkins, and Bernard, who was ALL there and then some, taught him a very nasty class in Boxing 101.

It’s easy to imagine that Pavlik is utterly devastated right now, a boxer who went into his fight Saturday night as one of the biggest stars in the sport and came out of it a damaged commodity, one that most of the boxing community is now in the process of re-evaluating as a talent, one who probably saw some big pay-per-view bouts in his immediate future fly right out the window. It’s one of the savage realities of a savage business -- one bad night can almost ruin your career. No matter how many times Pavlik assures the world, “That wasn’t me in there,” the fact remains that it was him, the worst of him as a fighter, and it’s cast a long shadow of a doubt over what previously was a doubtless enterprise.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.