Boxing’s heavyweight division is so poor, it’s almost a running joke. The sad part about that is that it’s been that way more often than not over the last 20 years.
The heavyweights, though, finally have company.
The middleweight division, once the sport’s crown jewel, is so bereft of talent that its champion, the unbeaten power-punching Kelly Pavlik, is left to chase big fights outside the division that once was the home of memorable fights such as Hagler-Hearns, Robinson-La Motta and Graziano-Zale.
Promoter Bob Arum has spent much of the past six weeks searching for a suitable opponent for Pavlik. He came close with a welterweight before settling on a light heavyweight.
Pavlik isn’t much for watching the sport on television, so he’s not up on who’s hot and who’s not. But when Arum mentioned Bernard Hopkins as a potential opponent, that got Pavlik’s attention.
The guy who ruled the middleweight division for 10 years before a controversial 2005 loss to Jermain Taylor ended his reign isn’t the fighter now at 43 that he was even five years ago.
Pavlik, though, knows enough about him to understand that even a slightly diminished Hopkins is a formidable foe. When they fight in a non-title, 170-pound weight-limit bout on Oct. 18 in Atlantic City, N.J., Pavlik will be confident but hardly cocky.
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