Former middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik made a lot of people angry and cost people a lot of money on Tuesday when he decided he wouldn?t fight Darryl Cunningham on Saturday.
Showtime planned to televise the 10-round super middleweight match from the Covelli Centre in Pavlik?s hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. The entire card was canceled upon learning of Pavlik?s decision, as was the broadcast. Ticket buyers in Youngstown, who had supported Pavlik for years and made him one of boxing?s feel-good stories in 2007, were left high and dry. Top Rank, his long-time promoter, will incur losses of as much as $30,000, or more.
Cunningham, a journeyman who has never gotten the kind of breaks that Pavlik has routinely gotten, had trained for months for what would have been the biggest fight of his life. He goes home with nothing: No fight, no paycheck, no chance to fulfill a lifelong dream.
Pavlik raised the ire of enough people to fill a football stadium with his ridiculously short-sighted and flawed decision.
He?s a grown man and he?ll have to face the consequences of his actions.
This decision, though, wasn?t about boxing. It?s about a cry for help, because nothing else makes sense. He doesn?t deserve derision. He deserves pity, sympathy and understanding.
No straight-thinking person would do what Pavlik has done. Top Rank had been negotiating for him to fight International Boxing Federation super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, ranked No. 9 in the Yahoo! Sports poll, in November. Pavlik, though, wanted another tune-up fight against a left-hander, so Top Rank got Cunningham.
Pavlik was to make $50,000 to fight Cunningham, plus 100 percent of the profits from the card.
?We were doing this card to accommodate him, not because we were going to make any money off of it,? Top Rank chairman Bob Arum said. ?He wanted the fight and we made it happen for him.?
Pavlik?s explanation is that he was unhappy with his purse. He said he read on the Internet that Mikkel Kessler, a former super middleweight champion, was being offered $3 million to fight Bute. That incensed him, he told his management team, since Top Rank had negotiated a percentage deal with Bute promoter Jean Bedard that would have guaranteed Pavlik $1.35 million. The deal was a 60-40 split, with Bute?s side, as the big draw in Montreal, where the fight would have been held, getting the larger share.
The two fighters together almost certainly wouldn?t have made $3 million combined, let alone one of them individually. Fighters competing on that level of show simply don?t earn that kind of money.
