The Loew-down: Kelly Pavlik should have taken the fight

RingTV.com caught up to Jack Loew, the trainer of Kelly Pavlik, for this Q&A regarding his thoughts on his fighter pulling out of a scheduled Showtime-televised bout with Darryl Cunningham in Pavlik's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio on Saturday.

Pavlik (37-2, 32 knockouts) said that he was upset with the $1.35 million minimum he was to be paid by Top Rank  for a planned November clash with IBF super middleweight beltholder Lucian Bute. The 29-year-old former middleweight champ thought it was not enough money compared to that which he believed Mikkel Kessler had turned down for a match up with Bute.

The move by Pavlik, who was coming off of a 10-round majority decision over Alfonso Lopez, forced Showtime to cancel the entire card, angering Loew, the network, his promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank, and his manager Cameron Dunkin.

RingTV.com: Has there been any conversation with Kelly?

Jack Loew: I have not spoken to Kelly since that day where he called me and told me that the fight was off. I have not talked to him since then. I heard that Bob Arum was trying to get a hold of him. I actually heard that today. So I don't know if they read that on the internet, or if somebody had heard that. I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea what his plans are. I heard that he may have gone down to Kentucky to visit some friends. I really don't know.

RingTV.com: Have you tried to call him or has he tried to call you?
  
JL: I think that Kelly is waiting for Top Rank to make a move. I have no idea what their position is. I haven't been reading the internet. I don't know what their position is. I don't know what they've said. I don't know what they're doing. 

My opinion is that if I was Kelly Pavlik, I would have jumped on a f**king airplane and flown out there and sat down with [Top Rank promoter] Bob Arum myself. But I have no idea where he's going to leave it or what he's going to do. I have no idea.

RingTV.com: Is there anything that you want to say about your relationship with Kelly?
  
JL: We're fine. We're fine. Listen, Kelly said that he was a little bit upset about some of the things that I said about the decision he made on the internet, but, you know, he said, "That's Jack." You know, I'm not going to lie about what I think or anything.

I didn't say anything really negative toward the kid. I just thought that things could have been handled a little differently. But they weren't, and now, Kelly has got to deal with that.

RingTV.com: How would you have had Kelly handle the situation?
  
JL: I would have fought the Cunningham kid. You know, hopefully, I would have blown him out of there and then made myself look really good, maybe better than I did in the Alfonso Lopez fight. And then, maybe I would have tried to use that as a bargaining chip for the Lucian Bute fight.

Or I would have said, "To hell with you, Bute."  Now I want to go another route. I want to go and do this or that. I just would have fought this Cunningham fight. I just would not have walked away like that. I would not have made a move like the one that he made.

RingTV.com: Do you believe that you're one of those closest to Kelly who tells him what he needs to hear and not what he wants to hear?
  
JL: Absolutely. Yes. And that's why, if you noticed on one of his interviews, Kelly wouldn't say anything about what I said for him to do, he said about what one of his buddies told him. If you read that one article, he said that it was his friend Tank. He didn't say his name, but he said "This guy, Tank."

But the guy is a contractor. He's a very successful contractor but he's not a boxing person. He's the one that advised Kelly that what they were offering him wasn't enough money for him. You're going to listen to a guy who pounds nails? This guy was a yes man with Ray Mancini, and he's a yes man with Kelly.

Look at it, the writing's on the wall. What I told him he knows that it was the truth, and he knows that fighting Cunningham is what I thought that we should have done. But you know, I can't control what he does.
I'm behind him 100 percent, and I will never walk away from him.

He's been loyal to me and what started out as a trainer-fighter relationship has grown into a helluva relationship beyond boxing. So, just because he's doing what he's doing, I'm not going to abandon that friendship. And I'm not going to abandon Kelly Pavlik.

RingTV.com: But you're not going to tell him what you think that he wants to hear as much as you believe that he needs to hear?

JL: Absolutely, I have to. You know if I tell him what he wants to hear, then it's just going to be detrimental to him. And at this point in Kelly's career, he doesn't need people who are just telling him what he wants to hear.