KELLY PAVLIK TKO end of 9 MARCO ANTONIO RUBIO

Saturday night was all about coming back from adversity. At Madison Square Garden, Miguel Cotto, in his first bout since being battered by Antonio Margarito, needed less than five rounds to show he is still very much a force to be reckoned with when wiping out Britain's outclassed and outgunned Michael Jennings. Then the PPV scene shifted to Youngstown, OH, where Kelly Pavlik, humiliatingly outclassed by Bernard Hopkins last October, showed that he remains a formidable force in his natural middleweight division by forcing Mexico’s Marco Antonio Rubio to surrender after nine rounds.

Rubio, as was expected, put up a somewhat better fight than Jennings had been able to do earlier in the evening. At least Rubio was able to land some meaningful punches, inflicting a slight bruise under Pavlik’s left eye.

Actually, after five rounds of retreating and covering up, Rubio showed signs of getting into the fight in the sixth. I wondered if, maybe, he had been waiting for Pavlik to expend some energy before mounting a rally, but, no, the challenger’s fight-back was fleeting in nature.

Pavlik, a bit taken aback by Rubio’s sixth-round audacity, simply marched forward again with renewed intensity in the seventh, and the Mexican boxer’s resistance all but evaporated.

This wasn’t the spectacular win that Pavlik wanted, but although he wasn’t able to floor Rubio he beat him into submission.

It isn’t easy to knock down a durable veteran who is constantly backing away behind a high guard, but Pavlik’s greater strength and steady pressure gradually sapped Rubio’s stamina and spirit.

Some of Pavlik’s hooks to the body looked extremely hurtful, and even when a fighter is blocking punches from someone this heavy handed it has a wearing-down effect. I was reminded of something that Bronco McKart said to me in an interview, which was that even though Pavlik’s punches might not look all that hard from outside the ring, it is different being on the receiving end, that even the so-called “little” punches have a solid feel to them.

It was one-sided to be sure, but the atmosphere helped make the fight seem more exciting than it was, with the packed 7,000 crowd in Youngstown getting right behind Pavlik and roaring whenever the hometown pride landed anything of any significance.

Pavlik was steady and persistent, and he did what had to be done. When he finally broke through with some big, clean hands in the eighth I thought that the Mexican fighter was very near to being stopped, but Rubio came out for the ninth, if somewhat reluctantly. It didn’t look as if Rubio had a particularly rocky time of it in the ninth, but he was worn down mentally as well as physically, he knew he couldn’t win and I don’t blame him for telling his corner that he’d had enough.

Neither of the PPV title fights had been competitive, which wasn’t surprising, but it was interesting to see how Cotto and Pavlik came back from the worst night of their respective careers. For both fighters it was very much a case of business as usual. Each got the stoppage win that had been widely predicted and now, one hopes, the boxing public can look forward to seeing Cotto and Pavlik in fights where the opposition actually has a realistic chance of winning.

In Pavlik’s case this would not be a bout against John Duddy. Game and likeable though the Irish middleweight is, the way he wobbled in the last round against Matt Vanda on the Garden show did not inspire a sense of belief that he would be able to stave off Pavlik for very many rounds.