KELLY PAVLIK TKO5 MIGUEL ESPINO

Kelly Pavlik got the sort of emphatic and exciting win that he needed on Saturday, pounding game but outgunned Miguel Espino into defeat in the fifth round before a hometown crowd at Youngstown, OH.

Espino landed his share of punches but Pavlik’s superior size, strength, experience and punching power were always in evidence in the main event on this two-city PPV show.

Pavlik was a bit hard on himself afterwards, admitting that he got hit too much. Considering that he hadn’t boxed since February and only recently was able to make a fist with his left hand after a long struggle with a staph infection, I thought that Pavlik did rather well.

Espino gave it all he had in his big moment. The fans got their money’s worth.

Pavlik has had some unfair criticism over the postponement and then cancellation of his fight with Paul Williams. Afterwards, Pavlik and his promoter, Bob Arum, made it clear that they still want this fight. It will be one to look forward to in 2010 if the Williams camp remains willing.

Espino was the perfect foil. He put up a fight, but he was right in front of Pavlik. He couldn’t hurt Pavlik — although he did have the champion looking bruised under the right eye — but Pavlik could hurt him. Espino took some heavy hits to the body but his high guard meant that it wasn’t so easy to nail him with flush shots to the head. Gradually, though, Pavlik broke through, the way a man with a sledgehammer breaks through a wall.

Right uppercuts through the middle started Espino going, and when his nose gushed blood and he went to one knee in the fourth it was clear that he couldn’t go too much longer. He didn’t give up, though, and he kept throwing punches till almost the very end. It was a relief, though, when the fight was stopped on request of trainer John Bray after Espino had taken his third eight count of the fight, after one minute, 44 seconds of the fifth.