Slick Pavlik punishes Lockett

Pavlik: champion display

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World middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik made short work of despatching Welsh challenger Gary Lockett in Atlantic City.

Making his first defence of the WBC and WBO titles, the man from Youngstown, Ohio scored a technical knockout after just one minute and 40 seconds of the third round at Boardwalk Hall.

Pavlik (34-0, 30 KOs) knocked down Lockett (30-2) twice in the second round before sending him to the canvas again in the third.

Upon returning to his feet, Lockett watched as his corner threw in the towel, ending the bout before the challenger suffered any more punishment.

After taking a hard right hand to the head midway through the first round, in the second the challenger went down to one knee after receiving another pair of punishing rights to the head.

Rocked

Back on his feet as referee Eddie Cotton's count reached eight, Lockett was rocked with another crushing right hand with 17 seconds remaining in the round, again dropping to one knee but returning to an upright position at the count of eight.

With blood trickling from his nose as well as from under his left eye, Lockett gamely answered the bell for round three but saw his dream of producing an upset win quickly ended.

Lockett said: "I just couldn't see the punches coming. He's a fabulous fighter. Every time he threw punches, it felt like he was making me pay for it."

Pavlik said: "I was catching him with good shots. He was smart to take a knee when I hurt him. I knew each time he took a knee, I had buzzed him."

On the undercard, Britain's Kevin Mitchell made a winning debut Stateside with a fifth round stoppage of Walter Estrada.

The Dagenham super-featherweight floored the Colombian with a body shot and was deemed unable to continue, with Mitchell extending his record to 27-0 with 20 knockouts.

The WBO super-bantamweight match-up between champion Daniel Ponce de Leon and Juan Manuel Lopez was never likely to last long and so it proved.

The knockout artists went at it from the opening bell and it was Lopez who landed the big bombs, sending the Mexican to the canvas with a right hook just two minutes into the fight.

Ponce de Leon crumpled under a flurry of punches soon after and was clearly in no position to continue after failing to make it to his feet.

Lopez moved to 22-0 with 20 stoppages while Ponce de Leon, in his seventh defence slipped to 34-2.