"Redemption in Youngtown", Pavlik Obliterates Rubio!

The  largest crowd in Chevrolet Center history  gathered Saturday night to see home town hero Kelly Pavlik redeem himself after suffering his first defeat in his career against Bernard Hopkins in October.  The crowd noise was deafening when Pavlik came out of the tunnel.  He then delivered a nearly flawless performance in the ring against challenger Marco Antonio Rubio.  According to compubox stats Pavlik threw nearly twice as many punches in the fights as Rubio.  Pavlik threw 695 punches as opposed to only 351 for Rubio. Pavlik connected on 146 punches for a 21 percent clip in improving his career record to 35-1.  Rubio connected on 23 percent of his punches in a losing effort.  Rubio was "one tough hombre".  

   Jim Tressel, Bob Stoops, A.J. Hawk and Brady Quinn were amongst the known commodities in attendance.  Former Ohio State quarterback and current ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit was also in attendance. He told the Cleveland Plain Dealer he is not a boxing fan but he is a fan of Pavlik because he is a local guy.  Pavlik won all nine rounds thoroughly dominating Rubio.  Although he did not knock Rubio down Pavlik dictated the entire fight and retained his WBC middleweight crown.  The only round which had any doubt was the sixth. It was the only round that Rubio seemed to go "punch for punch" with Pavlik.  All in all it was a great night for Kelly as he had the entire crowd chanting "Kelly, Kelly" throughout most of the evening.  Pavlik's next fight  is starting to be talked about. It most likely will be at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.  Sergio Mora, Vernon Forrest and John Duddy are on the short list of candidates to be "the challenger". June 20th is a possible date. Pavlik fans can only hope it is half of what Saturday night was.