Kelly Pavlik vs. Paul Williams Postponed, Possibly Canceled

Maybe they should just cancel the rest of the boxing year and chalk it up to injury.

Another potentially great fight has been derailed in the injury-plagued year of ’09, this one a bout that we hardly even had a chance to imagine. Bob Arum’s Top Rank Promotions sent out a press release last night stating that, due to a lingering staph infection on the middle finger of his left hand, Kelly Pavlik will not be able to fight Paul Williams as planned on October 3 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. November 21 or an early date in December were offered as possible reschedule dates by Top Rank.

This all was news to Williams' promoter, Dan Goossen, particularly the idea of staging the fight on November 21. "When I hear that date," Goossen said, “I’d be very interested in one thing … who’s he (Pavlik) going to fight? We know nothing about it."

From Goossen’s end, a November 21 date for Pavlik/Williams is a non-starter, due to the fact that another Goossen-promoted fighter, Andre Ward, has a big bout that night on Showtime against Mikkel Kessler in the first round of the much-ballyhooed Showtime Super Six tournament.

The other date being thrown around is December 5, and yet there are also problems there, given that HBO has set aside that night for a doubleheader featuring Andre Berto and Sergio Martinez. Neither of those fighters has a bout made for that date yet, however, and given the magnitude of a Pavlik/Williams showdown, it at least seems possible that HBO would bump the Berto-and-Martinez card and do some reshuffling of their November and December schedule.

One thing that is resolved once and for all with this unfortunate news is that Kelly Pavlik does indeed have some serious problems with his hand. Those same problems prompted Pavlik to postpone and then cancel a scheduled summer bout with Sergio Mora. That news came amidst a rash of dubious boxing injuries that forced high-profile postponements – David Haye’s and Floyd Mayweather’s, to name the most prominent – and many speculated that Pavlik’s injury was exaggerated and that the real reason he pulled out of the Mora fight was that he wasn’t happy with the matchup or the money.

But speaking to the Youngstown Vindicator today, Pavlik’s trainer, Jack Loew, painted a grisly picture of Pavlik’s left hand right now. Loew apparently had the doctor remove the bandage on Pavlik’s hand so he could get a look at the wound. "It turned my stomach," Loew said. "It's really bad. There’s a hole in it."

According to Pavlik’s doctor, he would not be cleared to start using the hand for punching within the next two weeks, when he was scheduled to begin training for Williams. That was enough for Loew to say that the fight couldn’t happen on October 3.

What’s left now is to see whether the two promoters can come to some agreement on a make-up date, which is quite a dicey proposition in the ever delicate world of boxing negotiations. There always was something about this fight that seemed too good to be true – two big, exciting fighters in their primes taking a huge risk in agreeing to face each other in a matchup that, although hotly anticipated by boxing diehards, doesn’t even have the crossover juice to warrant big-time pay-per-view money.

It’s rare that you see a star of Pavlik’s caliber lay so much on the line for a less-than-massive payday, and you had to applaud his guts in taking the bout given the precarious moment he faces in his career right now. Here’s hoping that the fight actually happens, because it would be quite a shame if this injury ruined what on the surface had the potential to be a fight of the year.

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