From boxing’s backwater, Ohioan energizing sport

Richard Brian

Middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik of Youngstown, Ohio, hits a speed bag during a workout at the MGM Garden Arena.

By Jeff Haney (contact)

Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Bob Arum considers boxing’s middleweight division and its championship a “sacred trust,” based on his history of promoting icons such as Carlos Monzon, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns.

Aligned with Kelly Pavlik since signing him as an 18-year-old prospect, Arum compares the latest middleweight champ favorably to those all-time greats.

Even Pavlik acknowledges he’ll have to add a few more titles to his resume to live up to his promoter’s optimistic billing.

Yet another of Arum’s projections has come to fruition. After his electrifying stoppage of Jermain Taylor for the middleweight world championship September in Atlantic City, it’s especially clear Pavlik has almost single-handedly revitalized boxing’s profile in large swaths of the Midwest.

In a classic example of a boxer whose personality in the ring reflects his hometown, Pavlik fights with an aggressive, no-nonsense style befitting the old mill city of Youngstown, Ohio, the erstwhile Steeltown USA.

By winning his first world title — and doing it in sensational fashion with a seventh-round knockout of Taylor after getting up from the canvas in an earlier round — Pavlik reinvigorated interest in the sport in a demographic in which it had become dormant, according to Arum.

Pavlik’s appeal, Arum says, resonates among white sports fans from the Midwest who live and work outside the nation’s coastal urban areas. It’s a crowd that lately has neglected boxing, which throughout its rough-and-tumble history has always carried a crucial element of ethnic and geographic pride.

As Arum sees it, Pavlik’s drawing power in Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest would be like Manny Pacquiao’s among Filipinos, Erik Morales’ among Mexicans or Oscar De La Hoya’s among Southern Californians.

Typical of his blue-collar approach, Pavlik does not think in terms of acting as any kind of boxing prophet of Youngstown — although he does admit his hometown has not had much to “stand up and cheer about” since the decline of the American steel industry three decades ago.

“I think boxing could use a boost, but it’s nothing I set out to try to do,” Pavlik says. “My style of fighting is just my style. It’s just that my style makes for exciting fights.”

Pavlik will fight Saturday night in Las Vegas for the first time since 2005 when he faces Taylor in a rematch at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Oddly enough, Youngstown and Las Vegas have had a sort of cosmic connection for decades, though it’s not one the chambers of commerce would likely embrace.

Youngstown historically was known as the home of a thriving underground gambling scene, so it was natural, especially in the old days, that some people involved in the business would move to Las Vegas.

In any event, Pavlik isn’t touching that one.

“I have no idea,” he says. “I’ve heard that, too. I think a lot of people from Youngstown move out here, and they want to come out and show their support.

“Other than that, the difference between Atlantic City and here is not much. It’s just a different casino. I’ve fought out here plenty of times.”

He has never fought here as a world champion, though, so the stakes are high in Saturday’s bout, which will take place at a catch weight of 166 pounds in accordance with contract obligations.

Members of both fighters’ camps have examined the videotape of September’s bout with the intensity of graduate film students studying “Rashomon” frame by frame. The same lesson can be gleaned from both: The “truth” about what happened depends on the perspective.

Taylor, pointing to his second-round flooring of Pavlik, insists he was in control of the fight until the seventh, when his faulty conditioning let him down. He has corrected the mistake in training camp, he says.

Jack Loew, Pavlik’s trainer, says his man brings a decided psychological edge to the rematch, with Taylor probably still suffering mentally and likely to sustain flashbacks of the devastating knockout.

Ozell Nelson, Taylor’s trainer, says, “Flip it around.” Don’t forget Pavlik hit the deck, too, and could be vulnerable to Taylor’s big right-hand shots.

In stark contrast to Taylor’s take on the fight, Pavlik thinks he was winning handily. He vows he won’t get lazy this time with his left hand, a lapse that led to the knockdown.

“I made a couple mistakes in the second round, but if you take that second round away, it wasn’t really that competitive of a fight, I don’t think,” Pavlik says.

A lifelong sports fan, Pavlik was thrilled by an opportunity to address the Ohio State football team after he won the title. His advice to the Buckeyes could well apply to his own game plan for the rematch: “Don’t give up, don’t leave nothing behind. You’ve got to give it your all every play.”

Or, as Pavlik puts it, “the usual.”