If there’s anything worse than underpaying a fighter, it is directly questioning a fighter’s desire to get in the ring.
The way these sudden fight pullout things usually play out, I’m betting that former world middleweight champion Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik will contend that he put the kibosh on a Saturday night Showtime-televised tuneup bout in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio (against Darryl Cunningham), because he was not satisfied with either that purse or a promised $1.35 million guarantee to fight world super middleweight champion Lucian Bute.
Promoter Bob Arum freely admits that Pavlik, who gave no reason for canceling the Cunningham fight other than not wanting to do it, has been angry about a published report that former super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler was going to get $3.5 million to fight Bute, the Romanian now based in Montreal.
For his part, Arum told me on Tuesday that, basically, if “Ghost” Pavlik doesn’t want to fight, then his promoter cannot force him to.
(Arum mentioned that he has not personally spoken to Pavlik and that all communication was by and between manager Cameron Dunkin, Pavlik’s father Mike and TR president Todd duBoef. Arum said Pavlik started balking two days ago and then avoided further phone calls from TR.)
“That information about Kessler is wrong, it is false,” Arum said. “I don’t know why Pavlik does not want to fight and neither does his father or his manager. But I say this, if he doesn’t want to fight, then why push him?
