AMERICA AT LARGE: To prepare for the November 13th fight, Pavlik did what a few years ago would not only have seemed unnecessary, but unthinkable. He got out of Youngstown.

JUST TWO years ago Kelly Pavlik seemed to embody the future of boxing.

Now, at 28, he finds himself struggling to prove he doesn’t represent its past.

The history of boxing is so cyclical in nature you can almost take some things on faith. Among these constants is that the guy who seemed a breath of fresh air when he burst onto the scene will, often as not, quickly become stale. Boxers are, after all, groomed to win in the ring, but few of them are equipped to handle the trappings of fame accruing to overnight success.

When Pavlik emerged from comparative obscurity to capture the world middleweight title, administering back-to-back wins over previously undefeated Jermain Taylor, he seemed more cognisant than most of the potential pitfalls awaiting him.

“I’m not going to let it go to my head,” he promised.

“I’m going to be the same guy I’ve always been.”

And in most respects he was. He didn’t go off on any cocaine binges. He wasn’t photographed in the company of any Brazilian super-models.

(Although he was photographed in the company of Hillary Clinton, whom he endorsed in the 2008 Ohio presidential primary.)

He didn’t run out and buy any expensive new big-boy toys (remember when his most extravagant purchase was buying four new tyres for his old car?), and he did not become a contestant on Dancing With The Stars.

No, when Pavlik said his lifestyle wasn’t going to change, he meant it, For the most part he remained true to his Youngstown, Ohio, roots.

The day-to-day existence in rust-belt America doesn’t markedly differ from that depicted more than three decades ago in Michael Cimino’s film, The Deer Hunter.

The young fellows still gather in the evenings at the blue-collar taverns, where they drink lots of beer, swap lies, discuss the fortunes of Ohio State and Cleveland Browns football, and commiserate over the battered economy and the shuttered steel mills.

Even as a world champion, Kelly Pavlik didn’t deviate from that routine with his old friends. It’s just that he had a lot more time to spend doing it, and a bit more cash than most when it came time to pay for the next round.

When he elected to step out of the 160lb division and take a more lucrative fight, as a light-heavyweight, against the ageing Bernard Hopkins, the result seemed more a matchmaking miscalculation than evidence of dissipation on Pavlik’s part.

Although the wily old veteran took him to school that night in Atlantic City, those closest to him were willing to write it off as a lesson well learned, and one that hadn’t even cost him his championships.

He made two successful defences against unthreatening Mexican opponents without ever leaving Youngstown.

There was also a rash of postponements, owing to what was described as a nettlesome hand injury, but even then there were so many rumours that Pavlik was spending more time in the saloons than he was in the gym that when he was solidly outpointed by Sergio Martinez this past April it barely registered as a surprise.

A clause stipulating an automatic rematch had been written into the Martinez contract. Within days, Pavlik announced he would not exercise it. Getting down to 160lb had been such a struggle that he was not eager to repeat the experience.

“I had to lose 35lb training for that fight,” he confessed earlier this week.

“I had to take off 17 and a half lb the week of the fight. It took too much out of me.”

Two weeks from Saturday night, Pavlik will return to the ring, as a super-middleweight, at Cowboys Stadium in Texas. The opponent is a familiar name to Irish boxing fans – Andy Lee’s old tormentor, Bryan Vera.

“It’s sort of an odd experience for me,” said Pavlik.

“It’s been more than three years since I’ve fought in anything other than a main event. But I guess if you’re going to play second fiddle, fighting on a Manny Pacquiao undercard isn’t a bad place to be.”

The experience could be no less odd than the venue for Tuesday’s luncheon. For more than a century the Friar’s Club has served as the bastion of New York’s professional comedians, but there was not a great deal of levity forthcoming from Pavlik’s soul-baring experience.

(In a classic episode of Seinfeld, Jerry believes himself to have imperilled his chances of membership when he inadvertently walks out the door wearing a jacket the club had loaned him to bring him into conformance with the house dress code. There seemed little chance of that happening on Tuesday. The only thing Pavlik forgot when he walked out the door was to eat his dessert.)

Vera has lost four of his five fights since his 2008 upset of Lee, and, said a Top Rank publicist, “if Kelly can’t beat Bryan Vera then he might not have a future in this game,” but Pavlik views the bout as the first step on his way back to the top.

“I want to wrap belts around my waist again,” he said.

To prepare for the November 13th fight, Pavlik did what a few years ago would not only have seemed unnecessary, but unthinkable. He got out of Youngstown.

“For the past month we’ve been at a training camp so secluded it doesn’t even have a proper name,” said trainer Jack Loew. “Roy Jones trained up there before us. It’s just a house in the woods, and all the rooms surround a boxing ring.”

Pavlik described the site, in the thriving metropolis of California, Pennsylvania, as “a boxing house”.

“You get out of bed and you’re looking at the ring,” said Pavlik.

“You get up to use the toilet in the middle of the night, you have to duck around a speed bag to get there,” echoed Loew.

While his old friends are still congregating at the tavern back in Youngstown, Pavlik’s most constant companion for the past five weeks has been Joe McCreedy, a super-middleweight from Lowell, Mass., who has been his principal sparring partner. There are paths through the rolling hills for roadwork. Just down the hill from the boxing house is the local high school, whose athletic facilities are at his disposal.

Life in the fast lane this is not.

“I’m working out three to five times a day, and burning off so many calories that I can eat actual meals,” said Pavlik, who is already within 5lb of the contracted 164lb for the Vera fight.

“I’m usually too tired to do much of anything, but up there if you’re looking for real excitement, you’ve got your choice between the local Wal-Mart and a five-lane bowling alley downtown.”