(Mikkel Kessler, left; Carl Froch, right; mean-looking stone lion, center)

With Saturday night's entry in Showtime's excellent Super Six tournament, which brings together the cream of the crop of the loaded super middleweight division, we are getting what might turn out to be the most action-packed bout of the event. Whereas the other bouts have thus far manufactured drama in controversy, strategic intrigue and/or upsets of the tournament favorites, Carl Froch-Mikkel Kessler figures as a brawl between men who usually prefer to come straight forward. But it has its own drama, aside from that. Kessler, who owns zero points in the tournament, badly needs a win. He is a better technician than Froch and possesses edges in most physical categories, but he's shown some emotional fragility, and Froch is used to out-gutting better specimens and sweet scientists who don't possess his steely resolve. If it all works out as expected, I think we'll have a candidate for Fight of the Year.

It's one of two such potentially action-packed fights this weekend, and we'll get to the HBO card later. I started my weekly previews with this fight because I think the Super Six tournament is suffering from a kind of criminal disregard by boxing writers, a view Froch promoter Mick Hennessy also recently espoused. Lucian Bute beats yet another one-dimensional brawler this past weekend on HBO and suddenly everyone's ready to dismiss the whole tournament yet again, when we all knew from day one that Bute's absence from the tournament was a flaw. Ultimately, the Super Six is where it's at in this stellar division, with six fighters ranked in the top 10 all fighting each other, all with different styles and backgrounds, in a far superior series of fights than anything Bute could ever manage in the division until the tournament is over. Listen: This tournament remains one of the most exciting things happening in boxing, and neither Bute nor a delay in the schedule nor other niggling complaints have changed that no matter the size of the bandwagon.

[TQBR Prediction Game 2.0 begins with this fight. For those of you joining now, please review the rules. For those of you who have played before, please look them over again as they have been slightly revised.]

There remains much to discuss about the past weekend, especially the waterfall of weird coming out of the Edwin Valero case.

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Want to see a good fight in New Jersey? Just make your way down to Atlantic City anytime Kelly Pavlik or Sergio Martinez are in town. In 2007, Pavlik engaged in a Fight of the Year candidate with Jermain Taylor at Boardwalk Hall, the venerable AC fight establishment. Last December, Martinez engaged in the TQBR Fight of the Year with Paul Williams, losing a razor-thin decision.

On Saturday, Pavlik and Martinez lived up to the hype – while not quite Fight of the Year worthy, they engaged in an entertaining, unpredictable struggle for the middleweight title. The main event was excellent, the undercard was highly entertaining, and the ring card girls were looking good. That means it must be time for another Jersey Fight Journal.

(OK, so these weren’t our actual ring card girls, but they are a pretty fair substitute.)

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For those who haven't heard the news yet, lightweight Edwin Valero -- as pure a puncher as there is in boxing, someone who as recently as this year was discussed as a potential future opponent for the world's best fighter, Manny Pacquiao -- was arrested this weekend for murdering his wife, a crime police say he confessed to committing.

There is the reaction to this news one has as a human being: If what the police say is true, you loathe the man for the killing and you're saddened for the victim, Jennifer Carolina Viera, and her family. Even if Valero has his demons, and he most certainly does, it's unforgivable.

As a boxing person, and as a person who values justice, it angers me, too. Valero had been accused of beating his sister and mother, and then his wife, the latter more than once. He's had repeated brushes with the law otherwise, like his DUI in the United States and various similar alleged acts in his native Venezuela. Other than the U.S. brush with the law that made it hard for him to get a visa here, he had paid no price at all for any of this.

The media in Venezuela is shaky at best, and while there are reports of the government there helping Valero out of his troubles, what's clear is that Valero has repeatedly been accused of dangerous behavior and has never been dissuaded from any of it. What little penalty he encountered -- a court-ordered rehab session after he allegedly threatened doctors who were treating his wife for what Valero said was a tumble down the stairs -- didn't really stick. Weeks after getting his rehabilitation assignment, he was arrested and then released for leaving the scene of a traffic accident, allegedly under the influence of alcohol (per BoxingScene).

I hesitate to wonder why no one on Valero's boxing team was able to stop some of this from happening. He was a potential cash cow, and I do question whether enough steps were taken to keep him out of trouble. His drunken acts of violence were no secret from the very beginning. But then, when someone's bent on self-destruction, and the destruction of those around him in his personal life, these kinds of things still happen; friends and business partners can only go so far. Mainly, I question why the Venezuelan government allowed Valero -- no doubt a national hero of sorts, and someone who has a tattoo of Hugo Chavez on his chest -- to repeatedly get away with so much. It's not surprising that a government like Venezuela's would protect the national hero from suffering any ill because of his recklessness. But it's counterproductive, to say the least. If Valero had spent any time in jail for any of his alleged wrongs, would he still have done this? We can never know, but the odds certainly are worse. Now, the chances of him ever becoming the boxer he can be are virtually nil.

This is all a shame for anyone who enjoys the sport. Valero was a force of nature along the order of Pacquiao and Yuriorkis Gamboa, possessing a rocket fuel concoction of speed and power that made him must-see TV, and he was maturing into a capable technician as well. Instead, barring a miraculous turnaround, he's going to go down as the biggest waste of pugilistic talent due to criminal behavior since heavyweight Ike Ibeabuchi, who once entertained and hinted at greatness like Valero only to spend his prime years in jail.

To Jennifer Carolina Viera, rest in peace. To Valero's promising boxing career, goodnight.

[UPDATE: And now, to Valero himself -- goodnight. He has killed himself in jail, according to police. This has become one of the more shocking stories in boxing I can remember.]

It was a fitting race to the finish, but like his TQBR Prediction Game-winning savior Sergio Martinez on Saturday, Pretty Toney pulled it out late over rival JB to win all the marbles. Ladies and gentlemen, in honor of the TQBR Prediction Game 1.0 winner, I give you...

It was either that, or photo-shopping James Toney with some make-up on, and I never have learned how to Photoshop stuff. Congrats to PT, who had a perfect weekend on the scorecards, and I'll be in touch with him about his prize. And thanks to everyone for playing. He joins previous champion Spidershark in the TQBR Prediction Game Hall of Champions.

Before we get into a bit of a breakdown of the past weekend, I want to make sure everyone knows we'll start 2.0 this week. It's a fresh start for people who didn't place as high as they wanted, and for people who joined late to start on even footing. A miniature discussion of prospective rules changes follows at the end of the entry.

So back to PT's tally: He hauled in 1300 points, with his accurate calls of Martinez-Kelly Pavlik (Martinez UD12) and Lucian Bute-Edison Miranda (Bute KO4, which was a round late but nobody else got closer). A mere four people saw a UD for Martinez, with many of us expecting a closer call on the scorecards. Ten people with with Martinez overall, compared to 16 for the favorite Pavlik, and those picking the upset got an extra 100. All but one person went with Bute, with four people saying KO4 for the accuracy bonus.

Lotsa fun gang. I look forward to kicking things off with Chris Arreola-Tomasz Adamek and Carl Froch-Mikkel Kessler. Be on the lookout for those prediction entries between Tuesday and Thursday. Here are your final standings in the meantime for 1.0. As usual, if you detect any tabulation errors, let me know and we can adjudicate:

I couldn't have been more worried for Sergio Martinez when the scorecards were about to be announced Saturday on HBO after a fight I had him clearly winning. Middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik was the adopted hometown fighter in Atlantic City and the Argentian Martinez had been robbed of a victory once on U.S. soil against Kermit Cintron and got edged on the cards in a brawl with Paul Williams. But the judges rightly rewarded Martinez with a unanimous decision in a fight where he showed his speed, smarts and tactical risk-taking were superior to Pavlik's strength, come-forward style and better-than-expected boxing. It was a really dramatic and entertaining bout if not an action-packed one, with Martinez winning the early rounds easily only for Pavlik to get a feel for Martinez and impose his size in the middle rounds before Martinez exploded late. Finally, the marquee win was Martinez'. Now, those who hadn't considered him a pound-for-pound player before -- and I was one of them -- have to rethink that.

Super middleweight Lucian Bute on the undercard knocked out Edison Miranda as expected, but he showed one-punch power once more for those who consider him a boxer who sometimes scores knockouts.

Kelly Pavlik played the starring role in the most thrilling fight I have ever attended in person, his 2007 middleweight championship fight against Jermain Taylor in which he rose from the canvas and scored a stunning knockout to claim the lineal title at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

(Not only was the fight poster cool as the Fonz, it was prescient, too.)

The fight was so good that, despite the fact that I had a financial interest in Taylor’s victory (hey, the Champ at the time was barely a favorite and was seconds from victory in the second round; I defend that bet to this day), I left Boardwalk Hall with a huge smile plastered on my face. Money comes and goes, but I had witnessed an event that I knew would be branded into my memory forever.

For this reason, I am particularly ashamed of my harsh treatment of Pavlik in the last year-plus, when he rapidly descended in my opinion from, “guy I will watch fight anywhere, against anyone,” to, “guy who needs to fight Paul Williams before I lose all interest in him and his stupid staph-infected hands.”  In fairness, I had a lot of company on the Pavlik-doubter bandwagon, which formed after his decisive decision loss to Bernard Hopkins and grew fervent with his inability to fight due to hand injuries and his perceived disinterest in fighting anyone with a pulse when he wasn’t hurt.

As I prepare to take another trip down to Boardwalk Hall to see Pavlik in what amounts, more or less, to another pick ‘em fight for the middleweight championship against Sergio Martinez, I feel compelled to revisit Pavlik’s career via BoxRec, my favorite time-wasting site in the world (next to TQBR, of course).

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So many babes, attempted and certified, this week in the boxing world. Which to start with? That was my dilemma. I went with Caroline Wozniacki, who will be supporting fellow Dane Mikkel Kessler ringside in his super middleweight fight on Showtime next weekend against Carl Froch, per a Sauerland Event news release. You don't have to do too many image searches for the tennis star to know that she is worshipped in the sports sphere for her hotness. Every conceivable picture of her bosom in every conceivable state is widely available on the Internets. Something weird about how sports babes are treated by the blogs. But then I suppose I'm participating a bit.

There is serious business afoot in boxing, of course. There's this weekend's boxing schedule beyond that already previewed. There's some news on drugs used by boxers, allegedly, accidentally or otherwise. There are only a handful of fights in the works or under discussion, but they're worth mentioning too. We'll get to as much of it as is humanly possible this evening. Interspersed will be the babes and attempted babes, for those who have a stomach for such things. P.S. I'm totally scared of Wozniacki's backhand, but with that fist she's making I don't know if she would be much of a boxer... unlike another of the babes to be featured.

From time to time BoxingScene's David P. Greisman and myself gchat one another. Sometimes we talk about boxing, even. In something of an experiment, I bring you a gchat transcript from a few hours ago. After I finished my dinner, talk turned to some recent news in the pugilistic world.

I bet middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik totally wishes he had a Hot Tub Time Machine that could take him back to mid-2008, when he was near the top of the world and the future was so bright he had to wear shades and Michael Jackson was white but at least not dead. Pavlik's own whitish hue no doubt contributed to his success, but it was as much about his punching power and exciting fights and "savior of Youngstown" back story. Then Bernard Hopkins schooled him, his career saw a series of bad misfires and even Youngstown seemed to turn on him a little. Saturday will be the first time since then he is to face an elite opponent, and there's a good news/bad news element to it. As Ring magazine wrote recently, "If it sems as if we've been waiting a while for the next stage of Kelly Pavlik's career to begin in earnest, it's because we have." The Martinez fight represents that. But Martinez -- who may deserve the pound-for-pound status Pavlik still retains -- also represents a threat similar to the one Hopkins gave him, so that's the down side.

It's the main event in a split site Saturday HBO doubleheader. Before heading to Atlantic City, the card visits Canada to pit super middleweight Lucian Bute -- a potential Pavlik opponent, if Pavlik beats Martinez -- against Edison Miranda, who's being pitched to us as reborn from several convincing losses thanks to new trainer Joe Goossen. Bute may have his own claim to pound-for-pound status, but Miranda is at minimum a dangerous puncher. Given the reputation of all four men for action fights, it should be a fun night of boxing.