Former middleweight champion and current WBC#1-rated super middleweight contender Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik’s professional boxing comeback took a wrong turn inasmuch as Pavlik withdrew from his upcoming 10-round bout against Darryl Cunningham today. The Pavlik-Cunningham bout was scheduled to take place on Saturday at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, OH, and was to be televised live on SHOWTIME® as the main event of a special edition of ShoBox: The New Generation. Both the broadcast and the live event have been canceled. Ticketholders can get a refund by returning their tickets to the place of purchase.
No specific reason was given, although Top Rank president Todd duBoef said Tuesday that Pavlik was not injured. The entire card has been canceled.
“Top Rank is very disappointed at Kelly’s sudden decision to discontinue the rebuilding of his boxing career,” said Todd duBoef, president of Top Rank, Pavlik’s promoter. “Kelly’s team specifically outlined a strategy for Kelly to return to the ring in an effective fashion. Kelly’s team gave us their objectives and we set them on a course, which began last May with Kelly’s fight against Alfonso Lopez and was to continue on Saturday against Darryl Cunningham. It seems Kelly has derailed this plan.”
laxone yoyr right i realy dont think that there is eny body that can beat sergio martinez he is very smart
Eva, yes it would be the end of JR.
There are not many fighters right now that can beat Martinez if any.
laxone why do you say that if chvez jr would to fight sergio martinez that would be the end of chavez
It seems like once Sergio Martinez gets a hold of you, you will never be the same!
kelly dosent want to fight any more he should just stop fighting
Pavlik is old news a hasbeen soaked in the sorrows of his own demise whose skills have eroded quickly and his liver swollen to twice the size of pavlik’s massive ego. Unable to sell tickets at home and insulted by a paltry 1.3 million dollar offer Pavlik choose to forgo a plunging career and dwindling fan base to maintain his insignificant life in Ohio as a uneducated tattoed nothing.
Apparently, Pavlik was upset over the offer he had received from Top Rank to fight Bute, telling Youngstown television station WFMJ-TV that “the fight is off and the Bute fight is not going to happen. I’m not going to fight a southpaw for peanuts.” He also told the station that his reason for pulling out of the fight was a “business decision.”
Top Rank was working on a deal with Bute’s promoter, InterBox, that would have given the Top Rank/Pavlik side 40 percent of the revenue from the fight. Top Rank had offered Pavlik a minimum purse of $1.35 million (plus an additional $25,000 for training expenses), which could have increased depending on how much money the fight generated.
A source close to Pavlik said that Pavlik was unhappy with the offer because InterBox had originally tried to sign former titlist Mikkel Kessler to fight Bute in November with a substantially bigger offer, which Kessler’s team rejected.
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