Kelly Pavlik (35-1) d. Marco Antonio Rubio (43-5-1) [21-Feb-09] (HBO)

speeds · Jan 13, 2009

Chevrolet Centre
Youngstown, Ohio
February 21st, 2009

WBC Middleweight Title
WBO Middleweight Title

speeds · Feb 18, 2009

Re: Kelly Pavlik (34-1) vs. Marco Antonio Rubio (43-4-1) [21-Feb-09] (HBO)

http://www.boxingnews24.com/2009/02/kelly-pavlik-conference-call-transcript/

Lee Samuels: The champion is here, Kelly Pavlik and his chief trainer Jack Loew are here, they’re in Youngstown getting ready for the big fight next week against Marco Antonio Rubio live on Pay Per View.

I’m going to turn it over to Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum and he’ll take it from here. Bob?

Bob Arum: Thank you Lee. I’m really excited about this entire endeavor. On February 21 Top Rank is producing for Pay Per View television a world title double header.

Starting in New York in Madison Square Garden at 9 pm eastern time and there will be two fights shown on television from New York, and then Miguel Cotto and Michael Jennings.

In Youngstown, there will be a complete undercard show and that will end in time for the people in Youngstown to see on the big screen Miguel Cotto and Michael Jennings. Then the screens will go up and then the main event for Youngstown which will be seen in Madison Square Garden, the middleweight championship of the world between Kelly Pavlik and Marco Antonio Rubio.

I think this is going to be an extremely enjoyable night for the fight fans to see two crowds from two really different cities. You’ll see Miguel Cotto on the comeback trail and to see Kelly Pavlik who is with us today defend his middleweight title.

Kelly, we know, had an off night for various reasons against Bernard Hopkins but now he’s back down to his weight and he’s ready to give a fantastic performance against Marco Antonio Rubio who is a tremendous puncher himself.

We have with us Jack Loew and Kelly Pavlik, so let’s hear now from Jack and then Kelly will make some remarks while opening up for questions.

Jack Loew: Thanks Bob. It’s real exciting to fight here in the home town coming off of the Bernard Hopkins loss like Bob said for various reasons.

But I think people are going to be surprised this time. You’re going to see the old Kelly Pavlik back, a little bit more boxing and I’m really excited about the night and we’re ready to go.

Kelly Pavlik: We’re excited, we’re definitely anxious to get back in there after the Hopkins fight. I’ve got a lot of proving to do and training camp’s been going great.

We’ve been working on a lot of things and training hard as we always do and ready to put on a great show on the 21st.

Q: Kelly, when you go into a fight with Hopkins and you know nothing goes your way that night, just a completely one-sided fight, you’re still champion obviously.

But I wonder when you remove yourself from the fight and you think about it, is there anything in that terrible of a night that you can take from it and learn or is it just totally out the window and you just completely forget about it?

Or do you look for something and some kind of silver lining or some kind of positive to take out of such a tough fight?

Kelly Pavlik: You’ve got to go back to the drawing board. There are a lot of things you’ve got to work on. But you know there are many things we take from that.

And Bernard said it himself after the fight to me in the corner is mental strength, how you put that loss behind you and you move forward. A lot of great fighters lose fights and they bounce back.

And our main goal right now and job is just to get over that fight which I did a week after the fight was over and move on. Now we’re fighting Rubio.

Q: Kelly, during the fight with Bernard, was there a point during that 12 rounds where you realized that you know what, I’m not my night at all, I’m not winning tonight, let me try to do the best I can.

But you know I’m not going to pack it in and quit - I’m not winning this fight.

Did that cross your mind at any point that you realized there’s no chance unless you happen to score a great punch and knock the guy down or knock him out?

Kelly Pavlik: Yeah, at the end of the first round I came back and I was back in the corner telling myself, hey, this could happen, I’ll loosen up, give me a couple more rounds, see what happens.

And that second round I came back and I go well you know he’s throwing a lot of punches, maybe he’ll fade and I’ll start getting warm, and then out there third and fourth round it was just be a long night, just hope for the best.

And that’s what we did, I mean I hit him flush in the 11th round, probably the only flush punch I landed the whole fight and when I hit him I just knew right then and there I just didn’t cause any problems at all.

Q: And I know after the fight was over, we could see that, sitting from ringside, Bernard was talking to you, they showed a little bit of it on the broadcast of the Pay Per View air.

And I was wondering, the words that Bernard said to you, could you recount sort of what he told you in the corner? It seemed like a pep talk I guess that was what the conversation was sort of about.

And your reaction to that and how that made you feel at that point, that this great fighter Hopkins would take the time to sort of on his great glory of winning the fight you know spend some time trying to perk you up a little bit.

Kelly Pavlik: He pretty much told me what we’re doing now, you know I would be middleweight champion for a long time to come. Get back to basics, be strong and all this.

And that’s what we did. That’s the only thing you could do. My whole career’s not over. Look at Hopkins. He has four or five losses and he’s going to go down as one of the greatest boxers of all times.

Look at De La Hoya and where he’s at, six losses. That’s what happens to great fighters, you bounce back.

Q: When was the last time - it would be in the amateur rings obviously - but when was the last time you lost a fight and you said you needed a week to take it all in.

And did you have to seek any professional help, like a sports psychologist or just did you just want to be by yourself? You have gone 10 years without a loss.

Kelly Pavlik: Yeah. The main thing was like I said, it was a bad night and one of those things. What can you do? You know what I mean?

Like I keep saying a lot of great fighters lose fights, but it’s all how you bounce back, the greatest fighters bounce back and keep winning and that’s the only thing I put in my head. You cannot dwell on this forever.

I’ve got a big fight with Rubio coming up. I’ve got to train to get ready for him. He’s coming in to take my title. It’s just a matter of putting it in the back of our head and moving on.

Q: Now when was your last loss? Was your last loss in the Olympic trials?

Kelly Pavlik: Yes, in ’99.

Q: And I read you’ve lightened up your training a little bit. Your workouts are phenomenal. But would you say you lightened up by about 10%, 20% just to be a little fresher?

Kelly Pavlik: Not that much. We pretty much do a lot of the same workouts. We’re just spreading everything out now. Instead of doing everything in one day and tearing down your body and tearing down your muscles what we’re doing is kind of the same workouts, not as hard on them.

Just so we give our body time to recuperate, give our muscles time to heal. I’m not saying that because I lost to Hopkins and that was the problem in the Hopkins fight.

I mean we trained the same way for Taylor twice, for Lockett and Miranda and we beat them. But the main thing is now just giving my body time to heal, giving the muscles time to recuperate.

We’re not going to get out of shape for missing one workout. In fact, we just finished training for four hours, so it’s just a point of how to balance it out.

Q: Can I ask you right now weight wise?

Kelly Pavlik: Right now actually I’m at 165, 165 and a half.

Q: Kelly, how important is it for you, coming off that loss too, fighting before a very partisan crowd in Youngstown which has always supported you?

And the second part of the question is with the economy the way it is, for everybody but it’s been tough in Youngstown for a long time, how much is this a present for you and to the people of your home town that they’re not going to have to go on the road and stay in hotels and whatever?

Kelly Pavlik: I think it’s great. It’s really important to bounce back, especially in my hometown, too look good. Coming off the loss is really important for us to go out there and prove the critics wrong.

I’m excited for the opportunity and with the fans, I think it is great, especially with everything going on now. The price of the tickets were great — $500 for ringside. I think the Hopkins price, I think I bought six of them, you know ringside tickets.

They don’t have to travel to see me fight - stay in hotel rooms. I think it’s just a nice little payback for the fans and they can come watch the fight and then get a night’s sleep in their own bed.

And I think it’s good for the city of Youngstown. People are going to want to go out and hang out and eat and enjoy a night in their home town.

Q: How about Rubio? We saw him on the undercard at the last show, but how many bouts have you looked at for him and what do you expect style wise?

Kelly Pavlik: We’ve been looking at a lot of the films on him, from Zertuche to Cuevas and his last fight with Enrique Ornelas, picking up things that he does.

Jack Loew: Rubio is not going to turn into a Bernard Hopkins that night.

We’ve watched plenty of film on him and he’s stayed true to his game every time. Rubio’s a come ahead fighter and there’s the question you had before about us cutting out training.

No, we didn’t cut out any training, we’ve actually probably sparred almost 135 rounds, and that’s not even like us. We’re usually more on the strength and the other crazy stuff.

We just cut back on a lot of the flipping the tires and the lifting the weights and we got back to a lot more boxing and I just think everybody’s going to see a complete Pavlik again that night.

Q: Kelly, with all the success you’ve had, do you think back on it? Did you prefer being the underdog in most of your fights, the major ones until you knocked off Taylor twice.

Do you think the underdog has the advantage because people aren’t looking for him?

Kelly Pavlik: Not really. Being the underdog, that’s something that’s on the books in Vegas or something in Atlantic City. When you’re in there and you’re getting ready to fight somebody, the last thing on your mind is being the underdog or you know being the favorite.

You’re going to go in there and you’ve got to fight. You’ve got to go in there toe to toe with somebody else that wants to beat you, in your own title shot, and you’re defending your title.

Sometimes it’s good to be the underdog, yeah, while you’re training you hear it, but it doesn’t really make you train any differently.

Being the underdog I’m still going to have to go in there and fight that guy if I’m the favorite or if I’m the underdog.

Q: Jack you mentioned that Rubio is a come ahead fighter. Is that the best possible opponent that Pavlik can fight?

Jack Loew: He’s our number one mandatory contender. Rubio is going to be right in front of us. We’re not going to have to look for him.

I think it’s a perfect fight to pick for us. I think that anybody that’s willing to stand in front of somebody like Kelly, that can punch like he can, I mean that definitely plays into our hands.

I think with the more boxing we’ve done and we get to the side of this kid and he comes straight ahead, I mean even a guy like Zertuche was hitting him with some shots that he was thrown.

So yeah, I think it’s the perfect opponent they put in front of us. But he’s tough.

Q: Kelly, how nervous do you think you’ll be fighting in front a hometown crowd and coming off a loss and trying to prove your superiority over a guy like Rubio?

Do you think that might work against you, nervous energy so to speak?

Kelly Pavlik: I agree there’s going to be a little bit of nervous energy. I mean in any fight, but someone who has come off of two fights to Taylor who beat Hopkins who was the top dog in the middleweight division and being on that stage and then with Miranda.

And then turn around and fighting Bernard Hopkins, you know once you’re at that level and then you’re on that stage, you kind of get the experience of being around that.

You learn how to deal with a lot of that — a lot of pressure, a lot of fans — and I think we have had a lot of good learning experiences here in the last couple years.

There’s always going to be that little bit of a butterflies or tension. But you know once that bell rings that all goes out the window.

Q: Is anybody running interference for you, keeping the hometown fans away from bugging you so to speak over the last month or so preparing for this fight?

Kelly Pavlik: Go ahead Jack.

Jack Loew: Well yeah, that’s my job. We’ve been pretty private in the gym. Today was the first day that we let the media in, even the local media. We’ve been pretty quiet. We’ve been keeping many people away from Kelly.

But it had nothing to do with the loss, we’re just back to the old ways it’s just a professional camp. Maybe we all got a little bit too content doing it the other way, but it’s been a real private camp, and fight week we’ll go to a hotel and we’ll stay and I don’t see the people being a problem here at all.

Q: Kelly I was a little curious, within the last week baseball took a couple of shots again with the revelation of Alex Rodriguez and you know with steroids…

Kelly Pavlik: No, I have not been shooting up (laughing).

Q: The thing I’m saying is that Antonio Margarito was suspended by the California commission. Do you detect any sense that people in general maybe have lost a little confidence in the honesty of boxing?

Kelly Pavlik: That is a good question. Right now it seems like baseball’s been the big target of it all. But as far as boxing with the hand wraps I mean okay if he kept the hand wraps on, I don’t know how much big of a difference in that fight would make it.

It just seemed like an off night for Margarito. And Mosley looked better than he ever did. Here’s a guy that’s supposed to be past his prime but all the sudden he looks like he could go 15 or 20 rounds again.

He did that against Cotto, he did that against Mayorga and he’s able to go rounds against a guy who’s known for putting other fighters down and he’s able to go 12 strong rounds, or 8 rounds and probably could have went 20 more.

So if that were the case with Margarito, and then if you look back, I mean boxing is a different sport than any other sport. I mean Vargas when he was found guilty of steroids against De La Hoya, but look, he got knocked out in what, the 11th or 12 round.

So I mean it’s kind of different in boxing. You really can’t take anything away from anybody in boxing.

It seems like the ones that do cheat a little bit are the ones that end up losing the fight anyways. As where in baseball it’s more of a laid back sport where you’re just focusing on a ball coming in.

Yeah, it’s coming in very fast but it does help your speed of your reaction time and everything else, as where in boxing there’s more of a technique and there’s more of a strategy over that (unintelligible).

So I mean it kind of balances out, it’s hard to take it away from boxing, they’re two totally different sports.

Q: And just a follow up with Bob because Margarito is one of your guys. People are so suspicious about stuff in sports. It’s almost like you’re guilty ‘til proven innocent.

Has boxing as a whole has been tainted to any degree whatsoever by the Margarito hand wrap fight?

Bob Arum: Well let me say this. There has been some taint. Obviously the trainer was using these wraps. He says it was by mistake but whatever, he’s tainted.

He did it. The California commission is tainted because they deprived a young man of his livelihood after finding him innocent of any wrongdoing.

Now that offends me as somebody who graduated from law school. It offends me as an American. This is not what Americans do.

Americans don’t punish somebody who is found to be innocent of any wrongdoing.

That is the blemish on boxing, the commission imposing a penalty, a severe penalty on Antonio Margarito who they found was - and the inspectors found was totally innocent and didn’t know what was happening with the bandages on his hand.

That’s what offends me. And that is a blemish on boxing, just the way you know the last eight years and some of the stuff that happened the last eight years was a blemish on the American system.

This is the same. This is people being very emotional about something and not following the rule or law.

Q: Kelly, I know you’re going home to fight Rubio. You’ve got to focus on the fight. But I wonder, you fought your last fight as we talked at 170 pounds, this is a middleweight fight.

Do you still have aspirations at some point to be in the super middleweight division or perhaps the light heavyweight division?

Kelly Pavlik: Well definitely, but right now there is just so much more we’ve got to accomplish at middleweight. This Rubio fight is one, and then after that if it pans out that we won, there’s just a lot here in the middleweight division that needs to be accomplished before we think about moving up.

But it’s definitely not out of the question. I’m 26 now, but as days and months go by and years go by, it’s going to get a little harder to keep this scrawny little body scrawny.

Q: So what do you view on the landscape as the quote-unquote big fight for you at middleweight? You’ve had some of them already with Jermain Taylor and maybe even the Miranda fight and whatever.

But what do you think is that - I know the Rubio fight is an important fight because if you don’t win that there is no big fight at middleweight.

But if you can get past that and Marco Antonio Rubio, what do you see as the big fight at 160?

Kelly Pavlik: There are a lot of big names. You’ve got Abraham. You’ve got Sturm. You’ve got guys that are still in contention there with Duddy and other fighters like that.

I hear the names, Depending on what happens with Abraham and his mandatory, there are fighters out there.

You’ve got Mundine who’s fighting again, I understand he won his fight. So I mean there’s a bunch of names being thrown out there.

I mean you know the (unintelligible) stay busy.

Q: Bob could you address that? I mean you’re the one that’s the architect here and I know you always look for the best - you know the best opportunities both in terms of the names and the money and all that.

What do you think is the big fight? I mean I’ve hard you talk about Sturm as a possibility.

Bob Arum: Well you see there’s a difference between the best fight and the biggest fight. The biggest fight is financial and the best fight is the best fight, you know the boxing people would regard as the best fight.

And that clearly seems to me to be Abraham. Plus financial nobody the hell knows who Abraham is in this country and it’s very, very hard turning it into the biggest fight.

Same with Sturm, that’s a very good fight and I’ve talked to both German promoters, Kohl for Sturm and Sauerland for Abraham. And I am confident that at some time we’ll be able to do those fights.

Duddy will be appearing at Madison Square Garden fighting Vanda on the Cotto card and he certainly is a big name and that could be a monster fight, either in Cleveland or in Madison Square Gardens.

It may not be - appeal to you as the best fight out there, Abraham probably would. But it’s probably bigger than an Abraham. And as far as Mundine is concerned, I just noticed that he is now in the middleweight rankings.

And he’s an Aussie kid and the Australians do tremendous money on pay-per-view television. Because the Sunday over there, the Hatton-Pacquiao fight will be shown on pay-per-view in closed circuit in Australia.

And so you know it does seem that Mundine would be in the mix.

Q: Kelly, can you talk a little bit about what it was in particular that caused you so much trouble in the fight with Bernard and then in hindsight what you’ve been able to take away from that experience that will you know possibly make you into a better fighter?

Kelly Pavlik: I don’t bring it up too much on that. It was just one of them nights. We had a lot of things the week of the fight that went wrong.

It was just bad timing. It happens to a lot of fighters and we just didn’t react on it. But as far as taking anything away, like I said before, learning to put a loss behind me and move on.

Q: Now Rubio, he’s not exactly the most powerful fighter in the division but he does definitely carry some pop as we’ve seen in his past couple of fights.

He’s been knocking guys out. You like to come forward and box and bang a little bit when you can. Are you looking to maybe try to box a little bit against a guy that can punch hard, or are you just kind of you know taking it as it comes?

Kelly Pavlik: I would definitely use my talent and ability and my boxing skills. As far as dancing around, no, (unintelligible) we’re going to use angles and Rubio seems to have trouble with that and we’ll use our hand speed.

Q: Bob, you were talking about ticket prices and making things affordable for fans and especially with the economy right now.

Let’s say you know a year, year and a half down the line we’re - hopefully the economy starts to pick up. Are you looking to possibly keep ticket prices roughly around the same given the success you’ve been having lately?

Bob Arum: Yeah, absolutely. I mean look, I would rather take in less money and have more people in the arena than charge big prices and don’t have as many fans there.

I think that’s counter productive. I think the way to build fans is to give them exciting fights, don’t give them garbage undercards, give them really exciting fights they can really enjoy and charge a reasonable price for it.

The more people that we can get coming to boxing matches the more fans we make and that’s what the sport needs to charge the insane prices that you know some promoters, sometimes myself have charged is really bad because it doesn’t give the real fan the opportunity to see a live boxing match.

And believe me, it is not only boxing. You know some of the professional football teams are making the same mistake with these enormous prices.

Basketball, you know the tremendous prices for courtside seats in many cities, that only is going to hurt the sport. So in boxing I think we’re learning, make the prices reasonable, keep the prices reasonable and keep the fans happy.

Q: Bob I wanted to just clarify or maybe you can explain, you referred to the law a couple times as it relates to the Margarito or the revocation of his license.

I understand your analogy that you know when Roger Mayweather got in the ring and caused all that ruckus that they didn’t fine Floyd.

But what exactly the law - what are you referring to when you say that?

Bob Arum: The law provides that you punish anybody who participates in a boxing match either as a corner man or as a fighter for something that that person did wrong, some act that he did wrong.

If he had knowledge of what the trainer was doing, he would per se have done something wrong and he should be punished.

But when you find that he didn’t know what was happening and you punish him solely on the basis that which they said, that he the fighter is the captain of his team and therefore is responsible to any wrongful act of anybody on his team, that is absurd, it’s not the law, it’s not American justice.

Q: And the law is…

Bob Arum: That’s just wrong, you don’t do that. You punish somebody for what they’ve done.

Q: So that’s it, is that California rules, is that Nevada rules?

Bob Arum: No, it’s not California rules, the California rule is contrary. It’s you only punish something - someone for what they’ve done. But they got emotional about it and said they were sending a message and therefore they said that a fighter is the captain of his team.

And if anybody on his team does something wrong, he has to be punished, the fighter. Now that is not the law in California, they didn’t apply the law.

What they did was completely unjustified and violates the tenants of our law. Now as much as we deplore and we should deplore you know doing wrongful bandages and so forth because we have to be concerned about the health and safety of the fighter.

Now can you punish the trainer? He says he made a mistake, you don’t believe he made a mistake, punish him. Nobody argues with that, but just don’t punish an innocent kid who didn’t know what was happening.
Click to expand...

speeds · Feb 26, 2009

Re: Kelly Pavlik (34-1) vs. Marco Antonio Rubio (43-4-1) [21-Feb-09] (HBO)

Kelly Pavlik wins by RTD, ninth round.

speeds · Feb 26, 2009

Re: Kelly Pavlik (35-1) vs. Marco Antonio Rubio (43-5-1) [21-Feb-09] (HBO)

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2009-02-22-30197913_x.htm

Pavlik stops Rubio after 9 rounds to keep title

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — The people started lining up hours before the doors even opened, thousands of blue-collar folks turning out to see this old steel town's first title fight in 25 years.

They waved banners and flags, carried posters and pictures, braving freezing temperatures to pay homage to the unquestionable king of the Rust Belt.

Kelly Pavlik expressed his thanks in the most proper way he could.

Cheered on by a raucous sellout crowd that finally made its way inside the downtown Chevrolet Centre, the middleweight champion rebounded from his first career loss on Saturday night by stopping top contender Marco Antonio Rubio after the ninth round -- for one night giving an entire city a reason to be proud of itself.

"I kept saying, there ain't going to be no pressure," Pavlik said. "But tonight, coming off a loss and being front of your hometown, it's human nature. It got to me a little bit before the bell rang. But after that it was down to business."...

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Kelly Pavlik (35-1) d. Marco Antonio Rubio (43-5-1) [21-Feb-09] (HBO)

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Kelly Pavlik (35-1) d. Marco Antonio Rubio (43-5-1) [21-Feb-09] (HBO)

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