SERGIO MARTINEZ W12 KELLY PAVLIK

Finally, Sergio Martinez got a break. He clearly defeated Kermit Cintron but didn’t get the decision, and he fought Paul Williams down to the wire but didn’t convince the judges that he had done enough. On Saturday, though, Martinez used skill, speed and savvy to give the performance of his life against middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, and the unanimous decision in the Argentinean boxer’s favour was richly deserved.

Pavlik was tough and game, and in the middle rounds he seemed to be turning things around, helped by a 10-8 round in the seventh thanks to a slightly dubious knockdown as Martinez seemed to trip after getting caught by a cuffing right hand.

Martinez came surging back in the eighth round, though, and for me he dominated the fight early and late.

Far from base at the moment, I wasn’t able to watch the HBO coverage, but no matter where in the world one watched the fight it was clear that a bloodied and beaten Pavlik needed a knockout as the bout went into the closing rounds — and it was just as clear that he wasn’t going to get one.

Martinez was masterful. He seemed to be seeing all of Pavlik’s punches coming and rarely got caught by a clean, heavy shot although of course he couldn’t dodge everything.

The pro-Pavlik crowd in Atlantic City had little to cheer. The champion from Youngstown, OH, struggled from the start and looked a forlorn figure in the later rounds as, bloodied from cuts around the eyes, Pavlik was a target for the fast punches that came flowing at him from Martinez’s southpaw stance.

As good as Martinez looked, though, it had seemed to me, as I noted in the preview, that Pavlik hasn’t been quite the same fighter since the demoralising defeat he suffered against Bernard Hopkins.

Pavlik struggled from the start against the constant movement and confident boxing of the underdog challenger. Martinez isn’t considered an especially hard hitter but his jabs and left hands through the middle had Pavlik looking bothered and bewildered from the start.

It looked as if Pavlik might be finding some answers in the fifth, getting in the right hand with a measure of success and moving Martinez back with a left hook, but the Argentinean fighter called “C’mon!” and by the eighth had seized command of the contest.

Pavlik fought like a man in a fog in the closing rounds, unable to find the elusive Martinez, getting hit almost at will and beaten at every turn. All that remained was for the judges to have seen the fight correctly — far from a guarantee these days — but this time Martinez could not be denied.