Next week Kelly Pavlik will have had six months of sobriety from alcohol.
It’s a good start to straightening out a personal life that has seen two stints in alcohol rehabilitation, and he’s only 29.
His most recent stay at Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage began Nov. 4 and lasted about 60 days.
But Pavlik, off a year this month, will be back in the ring next Saturday. He’ll take on Texas native Alfonso Lopez (21-0, 16 KOs) in a super middleweight fight on the undercard of the welterweight title fight between Manny Pacquiao and “Sugar” Shane Mosley at MGM Grand in Las Vegas (on Showtime pay-per-view).
Pavlik – the former middleweight world champion from Youngstown, Ohio – began having problems in December 2005. He pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of assault for punching a Mahoning County deputy, according to Vindy.com, the website for The Youngstown Vindicator.
Witnesses claimed Pavlik and some friends appeared intoxicated as they were being escorted outside a bar while yelling threats.
A more recent incident reported by Vindy.com had Pavlik being asked to leave a downtown Youngstown bar/eatery for unruly behavior involving a female customer on Oct. 31.
“On Halloween night, he was extremely disrespectful to a female patron and we had to kick him out,” Jacob Harver, owner of Lemon Grove Cafe, told Vindy.com.
The next day Pavlik pulled out of a Nov. 13 fight against Bryan Vera. The reason given was a rib injury.
According to Vindy.com, a family intervention involving Pavlik’s parents and his wife, Samantha, ensued and he was back at Betty Ford.
He’s saying things that seem to indicate he’s taking a harder look at his drinking problem this time, but he seems to have somewhat of a difficult time coming to grips with its enormity.
He was asked during a recent conference call to talk about what led to rehab.
“Pretty much what happened is I got caught up in the partying part,” he said. “Of course, when you get caught up in that you’re going to have the stress and everything with your home life and everything else that comes along with it. It’s pretty much just getting caught up with everything involved; I guess the word to use is the partying.”
He was asked to clarify his proclamation that he doesn’t need the bottle to be happy.
“What I mean by I don’t need to pick up a bottle, I mean that if I can’t drink anymore it’s not going to make me unhappy,” he said.
“I’m not going to be a miserable person because I can’t drink. But as far as what was making me unhappy or what drove me to the bottle, it wasn’t a case of that. It was just the fact that I got caught up in a lifestyle of going out and partying and needing a kick in the ass before it got too late.”
Wait a minute. If he can’t drink anymore? Not a good sign, but perhaps that was just the way he worded that.
Pavlik (36-2, 32 KOs) was also asked if there was one particular moment where he realized he needed to change.
“No, not at all,” he said. “More or less what it was, just the route that it was going. It wasn’t one experience or it wasn’t a life threatening experience or anything like that. It was just the point where it came to, `Hey, it’s got to stop.’
“It wasn’t me getting roughed up or shooting somebody or robbing somebody to get alcohol or vice-versa; it wasn’t that extreme. But it came to a point where it was like, `Let’s get our head out of our (behind) and move on here.”‘
Far be it from yours truly to decide what Pavlik should be thinking. But as a recovering alcoholic who’s been off the bottle more than 20 years, one thing is for sure – any bit of denial is bad news for anyone with an alcohol addiction.
Pavlik’s manager, Cameron Dunkin, said Thursday it is not fair to look at Pavlik’s comments and assume he is minimizing the seriousness of it all.
“I definitely think he understands he has a problem or he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing,” Dunkin said. “What he’s saying is there are guys that get up in the morning and it just overtakes them. But he doesn’t feel like that about alcohol.
“Does he miss going out with his buddies and watching the games (at the local spot)? Yes, that’s when he misses alcohol. What Kelly is saying is, it’s not like he gets up in the morning and says, `Man, I want a beer.’ He knows he can’t drink. He says, `I know it’s going to ruin my life.”‘
Dunkin said he spoke with Samantha Pavlik recently when he called the family home, where she lives with her husband and their two children.
“She said, `I have a husband, and he’s trying to be a dad,”‘ Dunkin said. “She said, `It’s great. We don’t argue anymore.”‘
It can stay that way. But only if Pavlik has truly realized that he can’t drink again because if a drinker is not ready to quit forever, he will go back to it.
