By Don Colgan

Kelly Pavlik’s breathtaking, championship winning 7th round TKO over Jermain Taylor continuing boxing’s stunning renaissance in another of a seemingly endless series of high profile matches, reminded us once again that, pound-for-pound and punch-for-punch, the great Middleweight division is undoubtedly boxing’s most exciting, and durable weight class.

Taylor was a young, promising titleholder.  His remarkable achievement in dethroning the great Bernard Hopkins and ending his streak of successful championship defenses at 20 was one of boxing’s bright spots in 2005.  After repeating his triumph over a still formidable Hopkins, the expectation was that Taylor would author a lengthy reign as Champion.  His subsequent title defenses against Winky Wright and Cory Spinks were reasonably clear cut yet disappointing in comparison to the bouts with Hopkins.  On the Taylor-Spinks undercard was the war between Edison Miranda and Kelly Pavlik, a 7th round stoppage for the future champion in which Pavlik sent a serious message to the Taylor camp. 

Pavlik had his supporters yet a majority of boxing writers and voices in the print and electronic media picked Taylor.  His victories over Hopkin’s earned him a foundation of support and helped fortify the belief that he would follow in the footsteps of Hopkins, Hagler, Monzon and remain on top of the Middleweight Division for years.

However, the ghost of Tony Zale was in the ring with Pavlik on October 5th.  It was shades of Zale-Graziano II as Pavlik was brutally dropped in the second heat and absorbed a fearful battering, surviving the round on conditioning and courage.  When the bell rang for the third round the prospects of a Pavlik ten count knockout of Taylor were as remote as the Colorado Rockies' World Series prospects on September 15th.

Yet Pavlik fought.  He carried the fight relentlessly to the champion.  It was not an easy journey for Kelly.  Taylor still had the edge and continued to out punch Pavlik yet the dynamic in the contest was slipping away from the titleholder.  Pavlik was throwing punches relentlessly, roasting Taylor’s midsection and eroding the champion’s will.

Like Zale, he was losing the battle yet unmistakingly winning the war.

Comparing Pavlik to Zale draws a time line through a division that has sustained boxing over the past century and a half.  All the way back to the distant era of The Nonpareil Jack Dempsey through Ketchel, Walker, Robinson, Fullmer, Tiger, Griffith, Benvenuti, Monzon, Halger and finally Hopkins the thread of tough, talented and resilient Middleweight Champions has been a constant.  The division has maintained a torrent of public interest, even in the Tyson diluted 1990’s when Hopkins set a cracking standard of excellence, surpassing both Monzon and Hagler in terms of successful championship defenses.

Today, as boxing is staging a recovery driven by a myriad of high caliber championship bouts, the 160-pound class stands poised to embark upon a lengthy period of fistic dominance.  Taylor may yet gain a measure of revenge on Pavlik, setting up an epic third bout that may have all the earmarks of Zale–Graziano or Robinson-Fullmer.  Over the past century the Middleweight class has produced a parade of ring greats, beginning with the greatest, pound-for-pound battler in the history of fistiana, the immortal "Sugar" Ray Robinson.

A century ago a snarling tiger and savage puncher, Stanley Ketchel, emerged to brutalize the Middleweight class.  He decked Jack Johnson with a smashing right worthy of a Langford, Jeanette or Dempsey, prior to being rendered unconscious by ‘Lil Artha.  Can you imagine Emile Griffith, as great a boxer-puncher and enduring champion that he was, putting Cassius Clay or Sonny Liston on the canvas.

The Toy Bulldog, Mickey Walker,  another in a line of world class battlers birthed in Elizabeth, New Jersey, fought a 15 round draw with Jack Sharkey, a former Heavyweight Champion.  He than took on the great Max Schmeling, holding more than his own for the first half of the contest until the Black Uhlan’s murderous right leads finally drove Walker down and out in round eight.

The Graziano-Zale trilogy stands immortalized in ring lore, even though both Rocky and Tony were not great fighters, by the standards of the great division.  Robinson lost and won the Middleweight title on five separate occasions, swapping the title with durable belters such as the Briton, Randolph Turpin, two time champion Gene Fullmer along with the hard-hitting, nearly indestructible Carmine Basilio.  Ray was a world class fighter well into the 1960’s, nearly a quarter century after he made his maiden appearance in a Madison Square Garden Ring as a Golden Glove Simon Pure.

Griffith and the 1960 Middleweight Gold Medalist, Nino Benvenuti of Italy, fought three stellar title bouts at the old Garden and Shea Stadium in 1967 and hosted the inaugural championship card at the New Madison Square Garden in  1968.  When you evaluate these two champions, Griffith was borderline great and Benvenuti a shade less.  Yet Nino regained the title from Emile in 1968 and reigned as champion for all but six months from April 1967 until December 1970, when he surrendered the title to a champion for the ages, Carlos Monzon.

Between Monzon’s dozen plus championship defenses, equaled by Hagler a decade later, and bettered by Hopkins in the 1990’s and early 2000’s the division boasted three of the greatest, gifted and accomplished champions in Middleweight History.  Ultimately Hopkins bettered both Carlos and Hagler and achieved an astounding twenty championship defenses.  A great champion, for the ages, does not appear on the fistic scene with practiced regularity.  In the Middleweight ranks, we witnessed a division great for three successive decades. 

That is a testimony to the great Middleweight Division, and a worthy legacy for Kelly Pavlik.