Lee Samuels: The champion is here, Kelly Pavlik. He’s in his hometown, Youngstown, Ohio with his trainer, Jack Loew ,who is also with us today and of course my boss, Bob Arum. This is Kelly Pavlik v. Jermain Taylor. The epic battle continues on HBO Pay-Per-View coming from the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday, February 16.
Bob Arum: Lee, thank you very much. I’m here in Las Vegas now and I’m still on a tremendous high my Giants having won the Super bowl last Sunday. And, you know, I think it was second only as a high to when Kelly won the Middleweight Championship knocking out Jermain Taylor.
Kelly is a young man who we at Top Rank are enormously proud of. A young man of dedication. A writer interviewing me a little while ago asked, “After Kelly won the championship did you give him any advice about how to behave?” And I said, “No.” Because Kelly is the kind of young man that doesn’t need any advice, just like you wouldn’t give advice to Eli Manning after he won the Super bowl; because they are two young men who are grounded and know what they’re about and you don’t have to worry about them behaving in an inappropriate manner.
So we’re very proud of Kelly the way he’s conducted himself, both in and out of the ring, and of course, Kelly has to be really thankful for the team around him lead by his trainer who’s trained him for so many years and has developed him into the great fighter that he is today.
And I’d like to introduce Jack Loew to say a few introductory words before we hear from Kelly. Jack.
Jack Loew: Thanks Bob and, you know, I agree just like Bob said, Kelly is such an easy kid to work with because he’s so humble and he’s just a plain out good kid. And, I just want to let everybody know I never thought Kelly could ever be in better shape than when we fought Jermain the first time, but he’s pushed himself to the limits.
He’s called me to start earlier in training camp and everything is done and gone so well here in this camp. And I think we should expect to see a better Kelly Pavlik come the 16th. And it’s going to be an exciting fight. We’re ready to go, and I just appreciate the call and having us on here.
Bob Arum: Jack, that’s music to my ears. And now without further ado, the Middleweight Champion of the World, Kelly Pavlik.
Kelly Pavlik: I’m just getting excited, kind of lying down a little bit on training now, and we’re looking forward to the 16th, and I’m definitely planning on going in there and putting on a good show. Simple, simple style they have and then simple game plan that I have that ends up working against a guy like Taylor. So that’s what we’re going to do.
Bob Arum: Lee, first let me just tell everybody that the fight of course will be – you can see it live at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Tickets are still available and it’ll be shown around the United States and Canada on Pay-Per-View at a price of $49.95.
And together with the Pavlik/Taylor fight, two outstanding World Title fights – really outstanding fights, Fernando Montiel defends his title against Martin Castillo and Cristian Mijares defends his title against Jose Navarro.
Dan Rafael: The fight that you had with Jermain, the first one, there was so much excitement after that fight it was such a tremendous fight. And I wonder the rematch is not that far removed from that. Can you just talk a little bit about the last few months – from everything I read every day in the Youngstown Vindicator, it’s been a – somewhat of a whirlwind for you.
Can you just describe how your life has changed since that fight, and after you talk about that, maybe Jack, you could give your thoughts about it – how it’s – what it’s meant for you in addition to seeing what it’s been like for Kelly.
Kelly Pavlik: It hasn’t really changed besides demanding, you know, demanding part of it like appearances, stuff like that. You know, a lot of that, you know, hassle which we cut down close to training, and with the charity events and getting to go talk to some of the teams I’m a big fan of the Buckeyes and Browns – those are all pluses that come with it.
But, other than that, that was about it. I mean, there were no Bentley’s or Mercedes and mansions.
So everything else pretty much stayed the same – everything’s simple. It was kind of a crazy situation but that comes with the territory and all your guys went through that. Mayweather went through it and De La Hoya went through it, but it’s just how you cut it off and how you get ready for training, eight, nine weeks out.
Dan Rafael: Have you enjoyed it Kelly? I mean it seems like you enjoy it. I’ve covered many of your fights before you were Champion and you seem like still the same kind of down to earth kind of guy that you were before that. But I have to imagine that you’ve got to be having a good time with it and enjoying yourself a little bit.
Kelly Pavlik: Some of it, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that I’d like to have gotten done after the fight, like just simple things around the house, stuff like that.
But then some of it is awesome. I got to talk to the Ohio State Buckeyes the night before the biggest sporting event in sports — the Ohio State/Michigan game. And I get to talk to the players and hear what they go through and then meet the Browns and Indians. I mean stuff like that’s awesome and I did enjoy that. And get to meet the players. That’s all awesome there.
But a lot of times though it became a little hectic and a little demanding on my free time. But like I just said before, that comes with the territory.
Dan Rafael: Jack, can you address what it’s been like for you. I don’t suppose you’ll ever have to buy another meal for yourself or pay for dry cleaning again in Youngstown.
Jack Loew: Actually I’m still doing the driveway business – I just upgraded my equipment a little bit. I could afford that now. And besides a little popularity and me and Kelly now getting to play at some of the finer golf courses around town. Things like that have changed, like Kelly said, there’s a lot of perks.
But we’re pretty basic guys, we’re back to normal. Two days after the fight I was out sealing driveways and we go play golf. So I mean everything’s been kind of normal it’s just a little bit more popularity.
But you know what? We’ve got a job ahead of us come the 16th and then that’s my main focus. So we’re just ready to go. But it’s been nice.
Dan Rafael: You have a chance to enjoy it also, like Kelly, you know, and liking it.
Jack Loew:: Oh yeah. It’s been great. Like I said, we’ve done everything, gone everywhere, we got to see all the stars, the football teams, baseball teams we liked, and now it’s time to get busy and now, like I said, we are extremely prepared for this one and then we’re definitely not taking it lightly. We want to keep that O on our record.
Michael Woods: Kelly, I detect maybe you’re not so enthused with the tug of the press on you, always asking questions. I see today – got the Sports Illustrated big feature on you in there. Has that aspect of stardom been more of a pain in the ass then you expected it to be. And is stardom all it’s cracked up to be?
Kelly Pavlik: Not really. I haven’t hit the stature of De La Hoya or Britney Spears yet. (Unintelligible).
Bob Arum: That’s some combination, you know.
Kelly Pavlik: But it’s very hectic sometimes. And like I said, I’m pretty much a simple guy, like I like to do things around the house and stuff like that, you know, of course with my daughter and everything. There’s been a lot of times where my time – I haven’t had any “me” time.
But at the same time it is a pain in the ass, but it’s also a lot of great things that are come with it. But, (unintelligible) main thing is I got to win the World Title and that’s something that nobody will ever take from me. And now the weird situation about it – stardom, everything else, you kind of block that out. You have to.
And, you know, you enjoy, you take in what you like from it and enjoy all the great things from it. And then things you don’t like you got to just block out. But it’s funny because leading up to it, you’re goal is to win the World Title, and then after you reach that goal, it actually becomes harder because now you’re mentioned with all the player of the year, this, that.
It’s like, we’re not going to be able to go down as one of the greats, or you have them mention, you know, great middleweights. And that’s something there like you go on classic sports and you watch all the great fights and they’re showing those because these are legends that are fighting. And that’s something else I want to reach – now that’s another goal.
Plus I got a big target on me and it’s really going to be harder now once you get the belt and everybody’s going to be hungry like I am – still am. I just won the title, it took me seven years – I’m definitely not ready to give anything up yet.
Michael Woods: Not ready to give anything up.
Kelly Pavlik: But the stardom will just keep coming. But it’s just all how you deal with it and I’m a guy that I don’t like the limelight too much. I’m not Mayweather and people like that. But there’s a lot of good that comes with it too.
So I don’t want sit there and take that away from it.
Michael Woods: You mentioned Britney Spears before, are you at all feeling like Britney Spears – not going to have to check you into a hospital or anything?
Kelly Pavlik: No. No. I going to be on my curve and I haven’t got any pills or anything like that so I’m all right. I’m pretty good right now. It’s not that bad.
Michael Woods: Not that bad. Great.
Kelly Pavlik: And there’s no cars following me around with cameras.
Michael Woods: Bob, did you schedule some of his first middleweight defense already with John Duddy?
Bob Arum: Well, Kelly has his work cut out for him on the 16th. Nothing is scheduled, we’re going to do it the way we always do it after this fight, we’ll sit down with Kelly, his dad, Mike and chat. And we’ll figure out where we’re going next. But Duddy is definitely a possibility. I have had meetings with the Duddy people. But I haven’t – I talked to the Pavlik camp about it. I want him focused on the fight with Jermain Taylor and we’ll have time afterwards.
But one thing I will say – I’ve been in boxing a long time, and for me the middleweight championship is a sacred trust. I love middleweights. I promoted so many great ones of, Monzon, Rodrigo Valdez, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns.
And this fight is being fought over the middleweight limit because that’s what the contract said and we’re honorable people and we live up to the contract. But according to – Jack has told me, Kelly – we’re going right back down to the 160 and Kelly is going to defend his title because he wants to go down in history as one of the great middleweights of all time.
Michael Woods: Okay, because you know Bob you’re talking to a Patriots fan and one thing the Patriots screwed up on is they scheduled their damn parade before they played the damn game. So, I didn’t think you (unintelligible).
Bob Arum: And Kelly and Jack come from Youngstown and we struggle and fight for everything we get. We don’t plan ahead.
John Whisler: Hey, I understand you went kind of wild after you won the fight – you bought some tires and I understand then you fixed up your rec-room and paneled it in oak and everything, you know, you guys really know how to live it up, up there in Youngstown.
Kelly Pavlik: You know, it’s just getting everything – making it homey, homey feeling. That’s about it – that’s all. That’s the extent that I went.
John Whisler: Yeah. Now is that your house? It’s a little ranch. I only have one kid and me and my fiancé and so there’s no need to do anything more just fix it up and make it mine.
John Whisler: Have you made any arrangements to make sure that your first check doesn’t get lost this time?
Kelly Pavlik: Yeah. I think somebody ought to talk to Bob and make sure we get one of them rooms with a safe. And put a big note on it not to forget to open it up before we leave.
Patrick Kehoe: Jack, there’s been a bit of talk around the Internet about Taylor training with his sledge hammer and being photographed, and (unintelligible) and the copying of how Kelly was training recently over the last few years . Did you see that and what did you think about that?
Jack Loew: First of all you don’t pick up that stuff just overnight. It’s not going to work for him in three or four weeks.
We’ve obviously got to be pretty deep in his head for those guys to try to say, well hey if it worked for Pavlik let’s us try it. He’s changing the color of his trunks I heard. He’s getting tires, pushing cars, so he’s obviously thinking about us a whole lot and he’s worried about how we get ready maybe it could help him. It’s not going to work for him.
Kelly is very well prepared, we’ve been hitting tires too and flipping tires and doing our thing and we’re used to that stuff, so it’s just not something you pick up overnight.
Patrick Kehoe: The other thing was I wanted to ask Kelly. How do you feel, I mean, you’ve talked in the past about the strain and the commitment and the discipline it takes to – for you – you’re about 6’2” right? – to stay at 160. You’re going to fight up at 166 and then you’re planning to go back down. How do you think that’s going to affect you physically?
Kelly Pavlik: It’s going to be a problem to get to 160, yes, it’s been that way, but we’ll get down, we’ll go through some things and find out the right diet – even better diets than what we’ve been on, and we’ll get back down. The main reason why is because it took me seven years and I’ve fought some rugged guys to get those belts, and I won’t leave without defending them.
So that’s the main reason for going back down. But we’ll work on it. We’ll get something together where we can make that weight and still be strong and healthy.
Patrick Kehoe: What do you think is going to be the indicator to you that that threshold can no longer be met? I mean you guys must have talked about that at least speculatively to think about it. What sorts of things do you think might be not happening for you and then that’s the signal to go out? Or is it going to be a business decision?
Kelly Pavlik: When it comes to a point where I’m actually getting sick trying to make the weight, or just to the point of, you know, what do you get, you don’t grow taller, you know you grow wider. So it’s just going to come to a point after a fight or two, you know, maybe three fights, depending on how we keep making 160.
Eventually when it’s time to go up and you know it will be very obvious, so we just got to make sure that it’s the right time and make sure we don’t stick around too long where it ends up hurting us.
Tom Pedulla: Do you anticipate that the rematch will be easier or more difficult than the last fight?
Kelly Pavlik: It all depends on his style and how I stick to my game plan. I don’t know how he’s going to react from that knockout. It was a stoppage, it was a pretty wicked knockout and neurologically I don’t know how’s he going to respond. I don’t know mentally if he’s going to be hesitant, if he’s going to come out firing.
But, as you know we prepare for anything, we prepare for everything that Jermain’s coming with. We’ll be prepared for him to come out banging, we prepare for him to coming out and boxing. So it’s just all on the 16th we’ll find out.
So that’s why we got ourselves in tiptop shape and we brought in strong, very fast sparring partners, and we’re prepared for anything that Jermain brings to the table. One thing we do know that obviously he took this fight that quick so he really wants to redeem himself so we can’t take nothing lightly.
Tom Pedulla: Thank you. And Jack?
Jack Loew: Yes. Well same as Kelly said. I expect Jermain to come out, you know, he wants to fight like we have the target on our back, now we took something away from him that he had for a while. Again, I agree with Kelly, neurologically, mentally, how’s he going to react when he gets in there and takes that first shot. You know, flash backs here.
And I’m really curious to see which Jermain Taylor shows up. But I’m extremely confident in Kelly and we’re coming to fight like we always do. And I expect if Kelly sticks to the game plan we’re going to have the same kind of night we did in September.
Franklin McNeil Hey, my first, for Kelly. You know looking back on the call – on the fight in September, one of the things that did – I mean the knockout was impressive, but one of the things that keeps coming to my mind is that you (were) behind on all three cards at the time of the stoppage.
Going into this fight, should the knockout not come, are you prepared to go the distance and win a decision? And will you be making any adjustments to assure that you’re not behind this time.
Kelly Pavlik: Yes, we’re always prepared to go 12 rounds. We never train for the knockouts, we train for 12 rounds and that’s why our training camps are so tough. But, you know, on the score cards, I’m a very picky fighter. I go back, watch the films, if it was a close round I’m going to give it to the other guy because of the fact that’s only going to make me work better and work harder on things that I thought I could have did better on.
Now this fight though I did in the second round, obviously, and the fifth round I didn’t see where he had any other rounds. And, you know, that’s the only bad part is with Taylor he’s always been favored with the judges, so what we’re going to have to do is just pick up the pace even more and make sure that we land a cleaner, sharper punches and that we outwork him. And that’s what we’ve prepared to do.
Franklin McNeil: Do you think that it’s possible he was getting – he was favored or given the benefit of doubt in some of the closer rounds because he was champion? Do you think that in this case that it’s possible that the old adage that you have to take the champion’s belt would be beneficial to you in this fight if the rounds are close?
Kelly Pavlik: It all depends on the judges. You know, that could have been a possibility in the first fight. Well, you know, we just got see exactly what the judges are going to think and who’s judging the fight and what happens from there. But you know one thing you’re getting that we got to sit there and outwork him and land a cleaner, sharper punches and make it easier on the judges to, you know, choose me.
Franklin McNeil: And for Jack I kind want to follow-up on this. What were the things that you saw in the fight that you’d say, “Hey, you know, we need to do this differently to assure that we’re not behind.”
Jack Loew: Well first of all those scores were, I think, absurd. I don’t care what anybody says, so we just take away that second round and I thought we pretty much dominated the fight. I also gave Jermain the fifth round. But from that point on I thought we did an excellent job.
We out-jabbed him – but if you go by their punch stats, we – the power shots we out-punched him – so, I mean, if everything’s saying that we out-hit him here, we out-hit him there, how the hell were we even behind? But, you know, we’ve got to stay busy and we’ll get busier.
We’re in better shape and we’re coming to fight. So if it means picking it up a notch then that’s what we’ll do.
Franklin McNeil: And one last question for you Kelly. Fighting at the higher weight, would this be advantageous – I don’t know why Jermain’s going at a higher weight, but why will this be advantageous for you to be at this – at the higher weight at the catch weight?
Kelly Pavlik: Because I’m taller than he is and it’s hard for me to make 160 and now I can sit there and work out like I do and even harder and eat and refuel my body, have the energy level sky high and be able to just keep putting great food in my body and train like an animal.
And I’ll have my balance, I’ll have my snap, everything will be there, I won’t be drained. And I think that’s where the advantage comes into play.
Franklin McNeil: Do you think your punch will be even stronger as a result?
Kelly Pavlik: Oh yeah. There’s more snap on it, you’ll be a lot more behind in my legs. I’ll have fresh legs. I won’t be hitting treadmills the day before the fight and stuff like that so it will just be great. I’m actually at 167, 166 as it is right now, so and I’m eating like crazy. I’m just putting in extra hours.
David Avila: You fought Jermain as an amateur and as a pro – did you see any kind of difference in his style when you met him the second time?
Kelly Pavlik: No. You know, it’s hard to remember the first one, but I do remember some of the punch and fight in the amateurs and parts of my fight with him and nothing’s really changed at all. Not at all, I mean, the same things he does, his left hand in the same exact place. So nothing much has changed. So I think that’s what made our game plan easier to stay with.
David Avila: And when he knocked you down, did you – do you feel that knockdown that you had against Zuniga – do you think that kind of helped you in any way prepare for the knockdown against Taylor?
Kelly Pavlik: You know, they’re two different knockdowns. Zuniga’s was a flash it was right on the button, you know, we weren’t hurt a bit, and our legs were there as soon as I got up my legs. They were there.
And then with Taylor it wasn’t – it was a behind the ear shot, the equilibrium shot, and – which I got hit with a lot of those in the second round and I watched the film over and over and over. I was there mentally, I wasn’t foggy. I knew everything that was going on.
It was just my legs, you know, one of those little buzzing feelings, and we just had to hold on. So, you know, resuming the fight that was just a quick little flash, it was just like somebody just pulled the carpet out from underneath me and I got right back up.
And with Taylor, I knew everything that was going on – it was just that spot.
David Avila: Do you feel that knowing that you could get up and not box somebody like Zuniga did that give you that extra confidence with Taylor, knowing that you’d been there before and kind of knew you had a Plan B.
Kelly Pavlik: Oh yeah, with Zuniga definitely because Zuniga throws so many punches, he fights like I do. He throws so many punches a round and he keep coming and he’s got a very good chin. I knew I could do that with Zuniga, with Taylor it would be the same way, especially when Taylor faded later in rounds.
Karl Freitag: I wanted to ask you about the size issue again. You’re actually a bigger guy than Taylor, right? So if you’re going up six pounds, might that be a mistake on his part, do you see it that way?
Kelly Pavlik: I think so. I’m able to train even more than I did last time which is hard to believe, but I’m able to put food in my body, you know, keep myself energized. Keep the proteins high. Keep the carbs high where I have a lot of energy and be able to work out like that.
So I think that has really benefited me and my snap on my punch as the bounce in my legs, everything’s going to be there.
Karl Freitag: Going into the fight and based on the last fight, would you say that Taylor might be more dangerous early and the longer the fight goes the more of a chance you’ll be able to beat him down?
Kelly Pavlik: No, because I thought the first round I dominated. In the beginning of the second round before that happened, I had the upper hand and it just one of those punches that caught me and what we’ve got to do is first let the referee know about those looping right hands behind the head and second we can’t lean into those either. We can’t turn our head that way.
So, without that second round, that fight might not have gone as long as it did. So, I’m not concerned about the earlier rounds.
I think the one thing that might hurt if he comes out firing is a stray right hand down the middle that might, you know, the whole game plan changes.
David Avila: Are you going to have a big army from Ohio coming to this fight too to support you?
Kelly Pavlik: I heard there were going to be a lot of people going out. People still want to get tickets and they’re still planning on getting them. Another thing is too, a lot of people live out in Vegas that are from Youngstown, so it might be a good size crowd out there.
David Avila: Jack, Taylor’s made some changes in his camp with his trainer and things, how do you see that affecting the fight?
Jack Loew: I’ve told everybody who’s asked me that question, what people have to realize they – the rap on Taylor was he brought all his bad habits from his amateur days – he get amateurish in the fights. Ozell Nelson is the one that taught him all that. So I just want to thank Jermain for bringing the guy back that taught him all the bad habits.
I don’t see any change in Jermain. He’s swinging a sledge hammer, Kelly’s swinging the same sledge hammer with one hand. Put that on the Internet too. I hope they see that.
Jermain can do whatever he wants, he can run Mount. Charleston everyday out there, we’re coming to fight, we’re prepared and there’s nothing he could change that’s going to do anything for us.
David Avila: When you are headed over there?
Bob Arum: We’re doing a press conference at the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA, both fighters will be there at noon. And then Kelly – we have plane that’s going to take Kelly and Jack to Las Vegas and he’ll arrive Monday – late Monday afternoon in Las Vegas.
Robert Morales: Kelly, I had a conversation with Emanuel Steward the other day and I was telling him that I thought, in my opinion, that Jermain Taylor lacks the killer instinct. He said that he disagreed with that – he said the reason he didn’t think he was able to capitalize on the second round was because he got too hyper in there and he started kind of doing things without any rhyme or reason.
What do you think about that assessment either way? Sometimes I know you can look in a guy’s eyes and see what’s going on. Do you think he does lack the killer instinct, or do you think maybe what Emanuel said is true?
Kelly Pavlik: No, he tried. I don’t think he (unintelligible) he tried in that second round. And another thing people keep forgetting about, there was a minute 45 left in that round when I went down the first time and there wasn’t another knockdown. And then not only couldn’t he stop me but he wasn’t able to really knock me down again. And there was a minute 45 left and he was trying. I mean he was swinging for the fences. But that could be coming to play that he was really worried about the fight going longer so he tried to get me out quick.
Another thing I heard too is that he blew everything he had in the second round. Well, you know, obviously, for as hard as they said they were training in that first camp, which was his best camp supposedly, how do you get tired after two rounds? I know you get tired in that round, but you come back the next round. Catch your breath in between rounds and come out strong.
I just don’t think he knows how to finish off. I held on. And my conditioning and strength was a big factor in that too.
Robert Morales: Jack do you want to weigh in on that?
Jack Loew: It just goes back to the amateur part of Jermain Taylor coming out. He was swinging like an amateur, looked like a novice fighter swinging at Kelly. And he blew it. So that said, that’s what it was.
Dan Rafael: Kelly, earlier in the call Bob talked about his great love for middleweights and the discussion was that you would go back down to middleweight after this fight regardless of the outcome – but can you talk about your feelings about the fight being at 166, are you happy about that, because it’s almost like it’s a big money fight freebee where you don’t have to cut the weight, or would you have rather had this fight be at 160? What are you feelings about it being an over the weight fight and not for the title?
Kelly Pavlik: I think it’s the greatest at 166. As we have said before it’s a definite advantage to me being a bigger guy and being able to train harder, which is harder than the last fight, and I trained hard for the first fight. But we’ve been able to put extra hours in and things like that and at the same time refueling our body and being able to eat, and not just nitpicking at stuff but being able to really eat big meals and our weight’s great.
So I think it’s definitely a benefit to me.
Dan Rafael: But you would still like to be back at middleweight after this fight though?
Kelly Pavlik: Oh definitely. I’m going to go down and defend the title. That is for sure.
Dan Rafael: You know there was a lot of discussion after the first fight, you know, of course he had the option to take this rematch or to pass and do something else. And I know a lot of people that I spoke to around boxing were kind of surprised that he would take this rematch right away given how close it was to the original date of the first fight and the fact that he was obviously making changes in his camp and of course the fact that you knocked him out and that’s a tough thing to rebound from without maybe getting a confidence builder ahead of time.
How surprised were you when he opted to take the rematch and were you happy that he took the rematch, or would you have preferred to do something else?
Kelly Pavlik: I was surprised but at the same time it was kind of weird because here is a guy that been undefeated he went in there and beat Hopkins twice, and Hopkins was ‘the man’ at middleweight. He went in there and beat him. He beat the fast elusive Cory Spinks. He beat up Ouma and then he had a draw with Winky Wright who is still considered one of the top pound for pound fighters.
So I think when this happened he was in awe, you know, shock, and I think that’s why he’s coming back so quickly. And I think that it could be a mistake and I was kind of surprised at first, but at the same time the kid is not used to losing and he beat all these guys – all these top fighters, and I think that he wants to come back.
Dan Rafael: What do you think about the fact that you have, I know obviously of course you and Jack and everybody you’re looking forward to this fight, it’s an important fight for you. But then you, of course, you read maybe or you hear at least on this call Bob talking about future plans against fighters like John Duddy. Did that motivate you for that type of event, or do you just try to put it out of your mind because you have this business to take care of?
He’s talked about maybe, Arthur Abraham at the end of the year. So Bob, as your promoter, is doing his job, which is looking ahead to try to make the biggest fights and the most money for everybody. But I have to imagine that as the fighter, you can’t completely block it out because you know it’s there. How do you weigh in on that?
Kelly Pavlik: You know it’s there, that’s a good thing. But I start talking about that on the 18th of February. Right now on the 16th, we’ve got a guy who’s coming in there wants to get back some respect from everybody.
It’s good to know that there’s stuff planned, that other things are lined up, but as far as any other type of attention I give that, that’s about it.
Dan Rafael: When you go back and watch the first fight – obviously we’ve talked a little bit on the call about the second round and what happened there. When you watch that, does it cross your mind just how close you came to losing that fight and that it – this could be a whole different conversation and there probably wouldn’t be a rematch taking place if Jermain knocked you out there in the second round?
Kelly Pavlik: Definitely. But it showed that I worked too hard to get to that point just to let it go in the second round, and that’s why we rebounded back in the third round and came out firing away. I think I threw a hundred punches in that third round.
And, yeah, it plays your mind, you learn from that too. If you watch the film, we watch the (unintelligible) looping hands – right hand that was hitting behind the head a couple times, even when I stumbled across the ring, if you watch that punch it was behind the head again. But a lot of things we did the first time by just leaning in, we worked on that and we learned from that and we’ll fix that drain.
Dan Rafael: What is it like to be the franchise in Youngstown? There are few people who are. They talk about Joe Mesi when he was fighting out of Buffalo or Paul Spadafora maybe when he was fighting out of Pittsburgh. But those cities have other professional franchises whether it’s the NFL or the NHL. They don’t have any other big time sports in Youngstown, Ohio.