Kelly Pavlik vs Chavez Jr crumbling fast

Although Top Rank's Bob Arum announced with fanfare two weeks ago his intentions to match former middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., the fight has been moved to the back burner.

First, the date Arum had in mind for the fight at Cowboys Stadium, Dec. 4, had a conflict with a college football game. Then Chavez's inner circle had second thoughts about matching the still-relatively untested Chavez, a cash cow for co-promoters Top Rank and Fernando Beltran, with Pavlik.

"They're not going to do the fight," Cameron Dunkin, Pavlik's co-manager, told ESPN.com. "It won't take place until it's good for Chavez and I don't think that will ever happen. They're going to wait until they're 100 percent sure their guy wins the fight, and that won't ever happen. So Top Rank will dangle the Chavez carrot to Kelly and me for who knows how long, but they don't have anything for us."

Dunkin said Arum told him he could explore getting Pavlik a fight on his own.

"When Bob says that to you, that ought to tell you what they've got for us, which is nothing," Dunkin said.

There was a possible Oct. 15 fight for Pavlik on the InterBox-promoted undercard of Lucian Bute's super middleweight title defense against Jesse Brinkley in Montreal, but Dunkin said they declined because the $100,000 purse was a pittance compared to what Pavlik has been earning.

Top Rank's Carl Moretti said Pavlik-Chavez isn't dead, but that they wanted to look at Chavez in his Sept. 11 fight, which could come against Pawel Wolak, and "reassess things after that. Everyone thinks Chavez needs to another fight with [trainer] Freddie Roach so they can re-evaluate where he is before we talk about Pavlik."

Chavez and Roach have been together for one fight, a June 26 win against John Duddy.

http://espn.go.com/sports/boxing/notebook/_/id/5402747/daniel-jacobs-fighting-more-just-belt-dmitry-pirog

Kelly should have accepted the offer from InterBox.

Kelly needs to understand that because of all the delays and also losing his championship, his marketability is way down. Before all those staph infections, I thought he was on his way to becoming the 3rd biggest name in the sport behind Pac and PBF. A white American champion with a fan friendly style could have really gone places. Now he is too stupid to accept a nice little offer to gain some marketability and build to a big fight with Bute. He does need to stay away from Bute and the Andres though. Abraham, Kessler, Froch, Stieglitz, and Bika could all be nice, winnable fights for him. Green and Taylor are probably on his radar

What i dont get is when Pavlik turned down the Martinez rematch, he stated it was because of him having trouble making 160. So he'd rather fight Chavez Jr then the Middleweight Champ?

Pavlik is crazy not to take 100 large for a confidence builder against a tomato can on a Bute undercard.

He should have accepted the offer which would have given him exposure in Canada kept him active but would have helped build a future fight with Andrade and Bute.

At Middleweight he's not really got alot of options, he'd be in danger of becoming a stepping stone for Danny Jacobs.