KELLY PAVLIK TKO3 GARY LOCKETT

Kelly Pavlik said he’ll fight Godzilla, HBO’s Max Kellerman told him he is Godzilla — at least as far as the middleweight division is concerned. Gary Lockett would probably agree with that. Indeed, the unfortunate Welshman must have thought he was fighting the fictional monster as he was beaten up and blown away in three one-sided yet exciting rounds on World Championship Boxing.

Pavlik did what he had to do, a punishing professional who delivered his punches with thudding accuracy. Lockett was game and landed some shots but Pavlik’s punches were like rocks in an avalanche and the challenger was inevitably engulfed.

I give Lockett full marks for courage. He kept getting up, three times in fact, where others might have stayed down.

Nose bloodied, eyes swollen, a red blotch on his forehead that made it look as if he had been hit by an iron bar, Lockett went down fighting. From the moment a right hand buckled his legs in the opening round the end was inevitable, yet he stuck to his guns and did his best to return fire in a hopeless cause.

Referee Eddie Cotton astonishingly seemed ready to send Lockett into the one-sided fray yet again after the third eight count, but the challenger’s trainer, Enzo Calzaghe, mercifully threw in the towel.

Pavlik’s performance was what the veteran British boxing writer Reg Gutteridge would have described as “punch perfect” — almost everything was precise and even though Lockett kept his hands up the shots were going around his guard or right through it. Some thumping right hands to the body in the third seemed to drain what was left of Lockett’s fast-ebbing resistance, and when the final right hand of the fight hit him behind the left ear and jerked his head around I was hoping he would stay on one knee for the 10 count, because he had suffered enough. The towel coming in must have brought more than a few sighs of relief from the watchers in the hall or on TV.

Yes, the fight always had the look of a mismatch, but I don’t think very many middleweights could have destroyed Lockett in three rounds. Here’s what you have to love about Pavlik — he takes care of business the way he is supposed to do.