DaytonDailyNews.com

YOUNGSTOWN — A.J. Hawk calls regularly to see how he's doing.

So do Brady Quinn and Joe Jurevicius.

The Cleveland Browns have had him on their sideline for a couple of games the past two years, the Cleveland Indians put him in one of their jerseys and had him throw out the first pitch.

Last season, Jim Tressel showed his entire fight for the middleweight crown — from his get-off-the-canvas gumption to his stunning knockout victory — to his Ohio State players.

The Buckeyes coach unveiled one round before each game and once he had his team fully immersed in this real-life "Rocky" story, he landed his own KO punch.

He had Kelly Pavlik talk to the Bucks before the Michigan game, then had the middleweight champ from Youngstown on the sideline as OSU laid its own whippin' on the Wolverines.

And just the other afternoon in Youngstown — as the unbeaten Pavlik was training for his Oct. 18 fight with middleweight legend Bernard Hopkins in Atlantic City, N.J., — an older woman walked into the cramped Southside Boxing Club with a song she'd written about the champ.

A few minutes later, two young black guys idled their car on Erie Street in front of the old gym — where the bricks are painted scarlet and the trim is in gray — until they got Pavlik's attention.

"Ready, Kelly?" the driver yelled from his open window.

"You bet," Pavlik said with a nod.

The guys let out a whoop of support and drove off down the street, beeping the car horn.

And then there was the man who called gym owner and Pavlik trainer Jack Loew, who remembers the conversation like this:

"He goes, 'Mr. Loew, I got a kid for you that'll be the next Kelly Pavlik, without a doubt.' The guy told me the kid could do this and that and this and that, on and on and on. Finally, I said, 'How old is your son?'

"He goes, 'Oh no, it's my 4-year-old daughter.' And I said, 'Whoa! First of all, I'm not training a 4-year-old. They've at least got to be 8. And second, who in the world wants their 4-year-old daughter to get hit in the damned head?'

"And he goes, 'Well, if she turns out like Kelly ...' "

As sports stars in this state go, no one is more embraced, more beloved, more entrenched in all things Ohio than the 26-year-old Pavlik.

You won't see him pull a LeBron James, a Chad Ocho Cinco, a Ken Griffey Jr.

No wearing a Yankees cap on the Cleveland sideline. No changing his name to draw more attention. No returning to the place he grew up and finding it an uncomfortable fit.

Kelly Pavlik knows who he is, where he is and how to be a hometown hero.

Who'd have guessed?

Mike Pavlik worked 19 years in a Youngstown steel mill until it closed in 1986.

"It was a terrifying situation," he said. "I had a young family and all of a sudden I'm scrounging around trying to find an option. There's no book written that tells you what to do when you and everyone around you loses their job. All of a sudden your benefits are gone, your pension, a lot of your dreams. I didn't know what I'd do."

He certainly never guessed that — along with becoming an insurance agent — he'd one day end up the co-manager of his son's boxing career.

"I don't think there are too many people who send their kids off to become boxers," he said with a grin as he watched his son work the heavy bag. "When he first got into it, me and his mother said, 'Give it two weeks and he'll tire of it and move on to play the clarinet or something.' "

But once 9-year-old Kelly walked into Loew's gym, a bond began to form that's lasted through a successful amateur career — it garnered three national titles — and into an eight-year pro campaign that includes a 34-0 record and the WBC and WBO middleweight belts.

"I guarantee you if you put out the T-shirts from five guys after they got done working out, I could smell them and tell you which one is Kelly's," Loew said. "Just like you know the smell of your baby, I know him. I think of him as a son of mine."

In the early going, the two forged ahead without much local fanfare. Youngstown is a hard-nosed, blue-collar town in the Steel Valley. You've got to earn your stripes, especially when the town has been buffeted by nearly one half of its population and a lot of its economy leaving through the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

"Youngstown's a tough area," said Loew, once a celebrated running back at Cardinal Mooney High. "It's a small, close-knit place. But it seems like any time we're really down, someone comes along in athletics to pull us out of that little rut.

"When Jim Tressel was at Youngstown State, we had all those national titles. Before that in the '80s, it was Mancini (world lightweight champ Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini).

"Lately we were on a downward spiral again and here comes Kelly and he wins the world title."

The upsurge began in May 2007 when Pavlik upset previously unbeaten, heavily favored Edison Miranda in a middleweight title eliminator.

Although his nose was bloodied in the second round and he was rocked in the fifth, Pavlik surged back and knocked out Miranda in the seventh. That got him a September date with champ Jermain Taylor, who had beaten him in the Olympic trials in 2000.

Again the underdog, Pavlik was knocked down and nearly out in the second round, then roared back and KO'd Taylor in the seventh round of what would go down as the "fight of the year."

In February of this year, he decisioned Taylor in a rematch and then stopped unbeaten Gary Lockett in June.

"The city has just taken to Kelly," Mike Pavlik said. "I think he brought them all into our corner after he won the title and thanked everyone here. He said, 'If it wasn't for you guys, if it wasn't for Youngstown, I don't think I'd have been able to do this.'

"That wasn't planned. It was purely accidental. He was speaking from the heart. Youngstown is his hometown. He's proud of it, proud of the Valley, proud of Ohio. People can tell that."

A true headliner

The East Side Civics is a neighborhood bar where Pavlik comes to throw darts, have a beer and a sandwich. A Sports Illustrated writer once visited and called it "a scrapbook with a liquor license."

The walls are lined with newspaper clippings, and from them you get a sense of the town's love affair with the fighter.

"Youngstown's Fighting Champ," reads one headline. "Boxer Brings Pride to the Valley," says another. There's "Neighbors Cheer Hometown Champ" and "Pavlik's Followers Have Blue Collar Fever." And then there's the massive headline from the front page of the Youngstown Vindicator that simply proclaims "KELLY! KELLY!"

Civics, the South Side gym, the house where Pavlik grew up and the place where he lives now — with his new bride, Samantha, and their 2-year-old daughter, Sydney — are within 15 minutes of each other.

Other Youngstown sports standouts — including a few NFL players — move on, but Pavlik has stayed rooted in his hometown.

In fact, he doesn't even leave for the mountains or Vegas or some other special locale for pre-fight training camps.

Well, wait, that's not quite true. He leaves his house and moves in with his folks, where he sleeps on the couch and lets Dad cook so he can make the 160-pound middleweight limit.

For Hopkins, it's a little easier since they are fighting at 170 pounds.

"I like the added weight," Pavlik said. "I can eat more. I've got more energy and I can work out more."

And if you already had been thinking Pavlik is a throw-back fighter, wait until you hear about some of the things he does. Along with training at Southside, he works in a pair of other local gyms, including a place called Iron Man, where the training is primitive.

Besides lifting railroad ties and heavy chains and occasionally pushing a sports utility vehicle, there's his take on the old chopping wood routine. He pounds a gigantic truck tire with a sledge hammer, knocking it 60 yards one way, then knocking it 60 yards back.

"All that crazy stuff," Mike said with a shrug, "it does remind me of Rocky Balboa."

About that nickname

Mike said his son was "12, maybe 13 years old" when he got his nickname:

"We'd go to the Cleveland Golden Gloves and he was one of the only white kids who was moving up there. And I'll tell you, back then he was a gangly sight. All knees and elbows, skinny legs and big feet. Size 14 (shoes). He weighed maybe 120 pounds and he was pretty pale.

"Other kids would be in the dressing room and somebody would say, 'Who you fighting, tonight?' And they'd go, 'That ghost over there.' And pretty soon people where calling him The Ghost.

"I went to a little place and found this friendly little Casper-type ghost with the big red eyes and the smile and we put that on the left side of his trunks.

"But as time wore on and he kept winning, we started using a more ominous ghost and, well, it's become his trademark. People really have taken to it."

The other day, the guy who runs his Web site — www.TeamPavlik.com — was talking about the five million hits they've gotten and the 3,000 orders for T-shirts.

Then there are those regular calls from Hawk and Quinn and Jurevicius. And there's still that 4-year-old girl's dad.

He wants Loew to reconsider.

After all, she's almost 5.

Kelly Pavlik file

Age: 26

Class: Middleweight (world champion)

Residence: Youngstown

Birthplace: Same

Record: 34-0, 30 KOs

Height: 6 feet, 2 inches

Reach: 75 inches

Pro debut: June 16, 2000

Became champion: In September 2007 with a seventh-round knockout of Jermain Taylor. Widely described as one of the greatest middleweight championship bouts in boxing history.

Most recently: June 7 in Atlantic City, N.J., won by technical knockout over WBO mandatory middleweight challenger Gary Lockett.

Up next: Light heavyweight bout against Bernard Hopkins on

Oct. 18 in Atlantic City, N.J.