Kelly Pavlik is on a mission to become the middleweight champion of the world. He wakes up every morning to a run up and down the hilly land of his hometown, Youngstown, Ohio. He follows that up with sparring at the gym followed by hitting an oversized tire over 100 yards with a sledgehammer, and then hitting the weights or taking a swim. The oversized tire is something new for this camp. "I was watching Rocky and he was cutting down trees, and I wanted to do that, but didn't think it would be safe to use an ax, so I thought this would be a safer way to train," explained Pavlik, the number one ranked contender by the WBC.

Pavlik trains in Youngstown now after training in Las Vegas for a few of his earlier fights. "Training in Vegas actually isn't any good. Everything is better here. We've got hills right up the street, and everything is so close. In Vegas you have to drive 20 minutes to get to the gym, 45 minutes to get to the hills to run. Here, everything is in my backyard," Pavlik stated. Sparring, usually something that Pavlik can't get a lot of due to his power punches leaving would be sparring partners not coming out, has not been a problem this camp. "We'll have about 112 rounds of sparring in, which is more than usual, but we're healthy so we'll do it while we can," explained Jack Loew, Pavliks longtime trainer. Pavlik is training for Miranda more than he has ever trained for any fighter. "Kelly is more focused this camp than ever before," added Mike Pavlik, Kelly's father and cook while his son is in training. "I told him, Kelly, you've got to slow down, but he won't. Miranda has brought out the best of him." When asked what was for dinner this evening, Mike Pavlik said, "Well, I don't know if he can eat another chicken breast, so probably fish, rice, and some broccoli."

When asked about the trash talking ways of Edison Miranda, his opponent on the HBO televised undercard of the Jermain Taylor vs. Cory Spinks middleweight championship fight Saturday night in Memphis, Tennessee, Pavlik simply shrugged his shoulders and said, "I don't know where he gets the idea that he can talk crap. He's really unimpressive. He's a bully, but once you fight back, he goes backwards and he can't fight going backwards." Loew added, "He's talking, let him shoot his mouth off. We're the biggest fighter he has ever fought. We're the hardest puncher he has ever fought. He's gonna leave his chin wide open." The knockout over Willie Gibbs and Allan Green didn't impress Pavlik at all. "Willie Gibbs gets knocked out, that's what he does. Green just looked at his feet the whole time and went backwards. I won't go backwards." Pavlik is also not impressed with the punching power of Miranda. "He broke Arthur Abraham's jaw in the third round and couldn't stop him. I know if I break someone's jaw, I'm going after it and they're not finishing the fight."

At twenty-five years of age, Pavlik still has a lot of fight left in him, but wants to be done fighting at the age of thirty. "The networks and the sanctioning bodies are making it harder for boxing," he says. Still though, Pavlik is not in the game just to win the middleweight championship of the world. "I want to do more. I want to win a couple of belts." Miranda had better hope his punches sound just as good as his smack talk.