Since pulling out of his scheduled tune up fight against Daryl Cunningham last week, Kelly Pavlik has gone to great lengths to try to explain why he felt the need to cancel the fight.
Most of his many interviews over the last few days have seemed to center on the fact that he wasn’t happy with being paid $50,000 to fight Cunningham and wasn’t happy with being offered $1.3 million to fight Lucian Bute.
It’s true that he has been paid more against lesser fighters than Bute and that tune up fights in the past have come with bigger pay checks attached to them.
In this case however Top Rank arranged the Cunningham fight firstly because Pavlik asked for it and secondly because he didn’t impress in his last fight, and they weren’t expecting to make much if anything on the event as a whole.
Also as far as purses go, Pavlik perhaps needs to accept that it isn’t 2007 anymore, and having fought just twice in the last two years, a decisive loss against Sergio Martinez followed by a flat decision win against Alfonso Lopez, he seemingly has little room for complaint if he’s making less now than he was then.
Perhaps also limiting his purses and exacerbating the situation is the fact that Pavlik no longer holds any world titles.
This mean little enough to hardcore fans who can reel off the best fighters in each division verbatim. To casual fans and television networks however, world titles are still a draw, even if they are becoming increasingly diluted and easy to get hold of.
Pavlik’s failure to sell out his hometown for the Cunningham bout is a further symptom of the fact that fans just aren’t as interested in him at the moment as they were when he was the exciting champion knocking challengers out.
