The city of Youngstown is a crumbled flake of the Rust Belt.

It was steel that built this Ohio outpost and steel that broke it. On the morning of September 19, 1977, thousands showed up for work at Youngstown Sheet and Tube, the area's largest mill. But the gates had been padlocked, and the company announced that most of the factory would close. Without warning, more than 4,100 workers lost their jobs. Black Monday it's still called.
    
Within a few years, Youngstown's steel industry had collapsed. Today, once-bustling commercial thoroughfares are chilling corridors of boarded-up shops and derelict facades. Sturdy old family houses are decaying; sheet metal is stapled over the windows of derelict buildings; demented graffiti covers the walls. The boomtown has become an almost sinister, ghostly place.
    
Apart from the fact that its median income is the lowest in the country among cities with more than 65,000 people, "the Yo" has few claims to even regional fame. No professional sports team trumpets its name, no attraction lures drivers from the highway that runs forlornly through it. But Youngstown does boast one distinction: Kelly Pavlik still lives there.

The son of a former Youngstown steelworker, Pavlik is the middleweight boxing champ. Called the Ghost because he is as pale as Casper, the nascent star reigns over the 160-pound division with a 34 wins in 34 fights—30 of them by knockout.

On Saturday night in Atlantic City, the 26-year-old faces slow-fading great Bernard Hopkins (48-5-1, with 32 KO's) in a 170-pound catchweight contest. The Philadelphia-born "Executioner," who is 43, once made 20 straight middleweight title defenses. In 384 rounds of boxing, he has never been knocked out.

Pavlik hopes to make Hopkins see a constellation or two under the bright lights of Boardwalk Hall, a 12,800-seat arena that looks to be chockablock with Yo-towners.

"If history is a guide, there will be 300 Hopkins fans on hand," predicts Cameron Dunkin, Pavlik's manager, "and 12,500 Northeast Ohioans screaming their guts out for Kelly."

He's probably not far off. A year ago, when Pavlik challenged Jermain Taylor for the W.B.C. and W.B.O. belts, more than 6,000 of the Ghost's hometown followers drove, bused, and flew to Atlantic City. With grittily determined cheer, they watched Pavlik get decked—for the first time ever—in Round 2, then rise woozily from the canvas and, five rounds later, knock out the champ.

Taylor, who twice beat Hopkins on points, lost the rematch five months later. Which explains why Pavlik will enter the ring on Saturday a 4-to-1 favorite.

Pavlik is not one of those Nautilus-buffed man-mountains with wide shoulders and cobblestone abs. He's a scrawny 6'2", but what he lacks in sinew he makes up for in spirit.

"Kelly is not another Great White Hope," says Lou DiBella, the promoter of Taylor. "He's a hard-punching, blue-collar guy—the boxing equivalent of a swing state."

When not throwing darts at East Side Civic (where Bud Light is on tap for a buck fifty), Pavlik can often be found tooling around Youngstown in a battered 2004 Dodge S.U.V. He wears what is more or less his uniform—a baggy T-shirt, scuffed Reeboks, and jeans that Dunkin says have been distressed "the honest way."

For a guy whose purses have totaled $10 million over the last year—Pavlik is guaranteed $3 million for fighting Hopkins—he's a very frugal guy.

Of the $2.5 million he grossed for clobbering the overmatched Gary Lockett in June, he spent $74,000 on a three-bedroom ranch house a block from his parent's home, and $2,500 on remodeling the basement.

The rest he invested in bonds and T-bills. "I'm very conservative with money," he says. Except for sometimes between the ropes, he doesn't take risks.

Oh, Pavlik did splurge for a Sears sit-down lawn mower. A "luxury item," he calls it.

"The mower was originally $3,000, but I got $1,000 off because it was the floor model, and another 10 percent on top of that because it was on clearance," he says proudly.

He bought the mower on a debit card with a $1,000 limit. "To make the transaction, Kelly had to call his bank and get an exception," reports Dunkin. "He doesn't have a credit card—or want one. Even with all his money, nothing has changed with him. Same car. Same clothes. Same Kelly."

Youngstown's last celebrated prizefighter, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, won the lightweight crown in 1982 and then left for Hollywood. "Kelly's staying put," Dunkin insists. "He realizes that he's brought a sense of self-worth back to Youngstown, a place that doesn't have a whole lot to brag about."

A town with a proud history survives magnificently, despite everything. Pride in the place is what still fires the fight.
    
And the fight is what Pavlik is all about.