The fall boxing season just went from really good to great now that it includes the "The Ghost" facing "The Punisher" for all the middleweight marbles.
The Kelly Pavlik-Paul Williams middleweight championship showdown, agreed upon Tuesday and scheduled for Oct. 3 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., is just what the ring doctor ordered: an honest-to-goodness championship fight between two elite American fighters in their primes, with an outcome that is somewhat in doubt.
It doesn't hurt that Pavlik and Williams are both likable guys outside the ring, and bring the heat every time they step into it.
The fight adds a gem to an already formidable fall schedule on HBO. After a duller-than-dishwater summer, the fall "season" begins Sept. 19 when Floyd Mayweather makes his return to face Juan Manuel Marquez on HBO PPV. If Golden Boy finalizes the terrific undercard it has in mind -- a Chris John-Rocky Juarez rematch, Michael Katsidis against Vicente Escobedo, and Zab Judah-Antonio Diaz -- it will be a show truly worth the $49.95 asking price.
HBO will keep the momentum rolling with the Vitali Klitschko-Cristobal Arreola heavyweight title bout Sept. 26 in Los Angeles. It's one of the few exciting heavyweight fights in the sport. Pavlik-Williams will follow a week later.
For its "World Championship Boxing" card Nov. 7, HBO has another worthy fight, the rematch between light heavyweights Chad Dawson and Glen Johnson. Their first bout was a fight of the year candidate in 2008. The sequel should be another good one. Exciting junior middleweight Alfredo "Perro" Angulo is on the televised undercard, and he always makes fights fun.
One week later, on Nov. 14 on HBO PPV, we'll see what I consider to be the biggest fight of the year: pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao against welterweight titlist Miguel Cotto. Top Rank's Bob Arum is promising a top-notch undercard. Let's all hold him to it.
And two weeks after that, on Nov. 28, HBO has the rematch between super middleweight titlist Lucian Bute and Librado Andrade from Montreal, where Bute always packs them in. After the drama at the end of Bute-Andrade I, I am looking forward to the rematch.
All that, and HBO has yet to schedule its December fights.
And don't forget about some A-level Showtime fights that further strengthen a spectacular fall schedule, including the first three matches of the Super Six World Boxing Classic: super middleweight titlist Carl Froch against Andre Dirrell and Arthur Abraham against Jermain Taylor on Oct. 17, and titleholder Mikkel Kessler against Andre Ward on Nov. 21.
As pretty as that lineup looks, I am most happy to see the deal between Pavlik promoter Top Rank and Dan Goossen, Williams' promoter, finally get done. It looked awfully shaky there for a while as they went back and forth for weeks haggling over every dime.
Ultimately, sanity prevailed.
Top Rank's Todd duBoef showed immense patience in working through the deal. Had Arum, Top Rank's boss, handled the talks, you just know he would have gone off the deep end at some point and blown it with one of his classic outbursts. DuBoef was calm and cool and let it play out, holding firm on some aspects of the deal (a rematch clause for Pavlik and the gate money) while slowly upping the guarantee to Williams' side from about $1.25 million to a final number of more than $1.9 million.
Goossen, who had asked for $2.5 million plus 50 percent of the gate, held firm as long as he could and got Top Rank to continually raise its offer until finally getting to a number he could live with. It's a fair number.
Pavlik and his managers, father Mike Pavlik and Cameron Dunkin, also get credit, because each time Top Rank raised its offer, they knew some of the money was coming out of their pockets.
I know Dunkin was getting frustrated with how long it took to make the deal, so frustrated that alternative plans were being seriously explored. Dunkin was looking at a possible smaller fight for Pavlik on a Top Rank PPV card against Peter Manfredo, while duBoef and Golden Boy's Richard Schaefer had already reached a preliminary agreement for Pavlik to fight Winky Wright in the event the Williams bout fell apart.
Had talks broken down, Pavlik might have wound up on a small PPV card in his second consecutive bout, which would have rendered him largely irrelevant. Williams might have wound up sitting for the rest of the year, unless Showtime were to have suddenly swooped in and given him a date for a lesser fight.
It didn't happen that way, in large part because of HBO, which sometimes is criticized for how it handles its budget and schedule but today deserves nothing but praise. Quietly and firmly behind the scenes, HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg and senior vice president Kery Davis wouldn't give in and accept anything less than the best fight -- which has happened at times in the past.
But not this time. (I hope that lasts.)
Believe me, the Pavlik and Williams camps both tested the limits, asking HBO about alternative plans if their fight wasn't finalized. Goossen would have been happy to make Williams against junior middleweight titlist Sergei Dzindziruk on HBO. Top Rank would have been fine with doing the Wright fight for Pavlik on HBO or pay-per-view.
But HBO, which is putting up a generous $3.75 million for Pavlik-Williams, just wouldn't go there. It never knuckled under. HBO refused to tell either side that if Pavlik-Williams wasn't put to bed, it would have a fall date waiting for either fighter. The message sent to both sides was that if they weren't fighting each other, there would be no Plan B for the rest of 2009.
In the end, the promoters, managers and fighters got the message loud and clear and made the fight.
And in the end, fans got a giant non-pay-per-view fight in the heart of what should be a fabulous fall.
Dan Rafael
