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© Jim Everett / Saddo Boxing
Yesterday at BB King’s Blues Club Restaurant in New York City, Top Rank held a press conference to announce the first title defense for WBC and WBO Middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, 33-0 (29), who will face the #1 rated WBO Middleweight contender Gary Lockett, 30-1 (21).
Also on the card will be another title fight featuring WBO Super Bantamweight champion, Daniel Ponce De Leon, 34-1 (30), against Juan Manual Lopez, 21-0 (19). Both championships will take place on Saturday, June 7, 2008 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ .
Before introducing Lockett, Top Rank’s Bob Arum reminisced with the media about some of the great middleweights that have come out of England such as Alan Minter and Tony Sibson, “One thing about the English middleweights is when they’re good, they’re real good and they come to fight; they are brave warriors.”
“Everybody knows we were planning on Kelly fighting John Duddy and John got cut so, that fight had to be scrapped,” said Arum. “We were looking around for a fighter to put in with Kelly who would give the people a tremendously exciting fight. We zeroed in on Wales and we discovered a tremendous fighter, who comes to fight, has a big punch and can take a punch, everything you want in someone that will make an exciting fight with Pavlik.”
“This is a massive opportunity for me,” stated Lockett. “I know that most of you have never heard of me. If you watch my tapes you will see I’m a knockout puncher, I have always been able to knock people out.”
Lockett feels that he and Pavlik come from similar backgrounds, “The first time I saw him was against Edison Miranda after the pre-fight build up I was kind of cheering Kelly on because he came across as the more humble guy, from humble surroundings and I think we are both working class guys that don’t disrespect anybody.”
“When Kelly won I was actually cheering him on but I wish I hadn’t been cheering him on now,” laughed Lockett about his shot at the title. “I’ve done my homework and one thing is for sure you’re not going to see a negative fight, you’re going to see a fight between two big punchers and I don’t anticipate it going the distance no matter who the winner is.”
Pavlik also spoke respectfully of his challenger, “I’d like to thank Gary Lockett for taking this fight, he hit it on the head, this is going to be an exciting fight.”
“I’m not looking past Gary Lockett, not too long ago we were in the same boat and I was unheard of,” said Pavlik, who feels his opponent is in a similar situation as him before he faced Taylor for the middleweight title.
“This is my first real title defense and we took seven years to get it; we went through everybody they put in front of us, that’s why I’m glad we got the match up with Gary,” said Pavlik. “This kid comes to fight, he throws a lot of good punches, he’s fundamentally sound, and doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. Come June 7th there’s going to be fireworks and we are going to put on a great show.”
