Pavlik needs more powerful statements

LAS VEGAS -- The face of Youngstown, Ohio, left the ring here Saturday night with a couple of lumps but no blemishes on an unbeaten record.

The face of the crowd that had watched in the MGM Grand Garden seemed to be a collective frown.

When it was announced that Kelly Pavlik had defeated Jermain Taylor, building his record to 33-0, there were shrugs accompanying the cheering. The result, while probably correct, was about as clear-cut as the rules for this rematch of a sensational middleweight title brawl five months earlier.

With the fight at 166 pounds, six pounds above the sanctioned middleweight standard, even if Pavlik lost, he was still the champ.

The fans had seen the Sept. 29 brawl -- Pavlik down and almost out in the second, Taylor pounded into the ground in a corner to end the match in the seventh. So fans had expected another slugfest.

Instead of thunder, they got tactics. It wasn’t exactly a ballet, but the closest either was to going down was when they climbed out of the ring, tired, afterward.

It was a unanimous decision, and not a particularly close one.

Pavlik said that Taylor, at 29 four years older and unbeaten until the Sept. 29 loss in Atlantic City, “was better tonight [than the last fight].” He also said that he felt he had won the match when he started to land to the body consistently in the last two rounds.

“You could hear the breath go out of him,” Pavlik said.

Final punch stats had Pavlik throwing 845 punches to Taylor’s 456 and landing 267 to 178.

Still, there was no question that Taylor, now 27-2-1 and accompanied down the aisle to his locker room after the fight with chants of “retire, retire,” acquitted himself well.

“I thought I did pretty well,” Taylor said afterward. “I thought it was a close fight . . . but I guess he won the last couple of rounds.”

Both the statement and the body language seemed to spell resignation. Taylor has held one or another of boxing’s many sanctioned middleweight crowns since 2003. He took a huge beating at the end of the first Pavlik fight and now, as these things tend to go, was on the short end of the benefit of the doubt that judges always seem to give the champ.

Taylor has also been around long enough to know that boxing is always looking for the young, new face, and Pavlik is both.

The sport would have been better served had Pavlik put Taylor down; even better out. He has a great story that should sell: Tough kid from the streets of a tough town gives the town, down on its luck for 30 years with the closure of many steel mills, something to rally around.

Certainly, Youngstown can, and will.

But boxing would like to make Pavlik into a fighter who sells 750,000 pay-per-views, rather than perhaps 200,000, and thunder and lightning, blood and guts, does that much better than tactics and matches won with body punches that the average Joe in row 45 can’t really see.

The crowd of 9,706, in an arena that was configured for just under 13,000 Saturday night, says much.

Pavlik is new and good, but the world that even bothers to care still thinks that boxing is all about Oscar De La Hoya and whomever he is fighting next.

A brawl, or at least a more one-sided battle, could have taken Pavlik closer to the consciousness of that part of the general public that follows boxing mostly as an afterthought.

Real boxing observers like and appreciate this sort of evening. Nice or not, fair or not, the general public wonders why it hadn’t saved its money for a couple of Dodgers games.

Top Rank, Bob Arum’s promoting company that has Pavlik and has a big challenge ahead to keep his persona growing in the masses, has talked about a couple of possible matches. One would be against Irish John Duddy, a popular East Coast fighter. The other would be against Felix Trinidad, a big name who is clearly sliding down the far side of his career mountain.

Both would be nice paydays for Pavlik, who made an estimated $2.2 million Saturday night. Neither would have ticket scalpers getting into fistfights in the parking lot.

Boxing was hoping for another extraordinary night, like Sept. 29. Instead, it got a night where the big news was body punches and three judges telling everybody what they meant.

Nice for the real fans, but it doesn’t wow them in Fargo.

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. For previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.