Vanes Martirosyan Decisions Angel Hernandez

By Boxing News - 06/28/2008 - Comments

martirosyan46246.jpgBy Michael Lieberman: Undefeated light middleweight prospect Vanes Martirosyan (20-0, 13 KOs) won an easy 10-round unanimous decision over veteran Angel Hernandez (28-7, 16 KOs) on Thursday night at the Orleans Hotel & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Martirosyan, 22, knocked Hernandez down once in the fight, dropping him with a thudding right uppercut in the 1st round. It looked then that more knockdowns would follow in the forthcoming rounds, but Martirosyan was unable to add to this knockdown for the remainder of the fight, having to be content with winning just by a lopsided margin over Hernandez. The final judges’ scores were 100-89, 100-89 and 100-89.

The fight was never remotely close, mainly because the 32 year-old Hernandez didn’t have the power, hand speed or boxing ability to compete with Martirosyan at any step of the way through the fight. What Hernandez did have, however, was a good chin, which enabled him to weather the monstrous uppercuts and right hands that Martirosyan was periodically tagging him with. I still think Martirosyan would have succeeded in knocking Hernandez out, if Martirosyan had stopped with his constant moving, which seemed to undercut a lot of his power.

When Martirosyan would suddenly stop moving, he’d be unable to get the kind of power on his shots that he would have liked, for he’d either be leaning on his back foot when he threw his punches or else slightly out of breath from his constant movement, something that robbed him of much of his power.

Earlier in his career, Martirosyan didn’t move nearly as much, hence he was scoring a lot of fast knockouts over his opponents. But, during this time it was discovered that Martirosyan was often susceptible to getting hit with big shots because he lacked the quickness and hand coordination to block many of the incoming shots. I suppose is why they changed Martirosyan’s once offensive-oriented style and made a runner out of him.

The style doesn’t really suit him, taking away his opportunities to knock most of his opponents out in the first couple of rounds, but it’s likely to stay because it’s working for him. Ideally, Martirosyan needs to know when to turn on and turn of his boxing, for in a lot of cases he’d better off if he would just stand and trade for shots for 30-40 second stretches in each round, giving his legs a rest from all that excessive movement that he’s been doing.

Martirosyan looked good in rounds two through six, hitting Hernandez with big hooks, uppercuts, jabs and right hands almost at will. Hernandez would attempt his own shots, but due to the combination of his dreadful hand speed and the constant movement of Martirosyan, he mostly ended up hitting nothing but air. Hernandez, though, seemed happy just being able to take Martirosyan’s big shots, which he seemed to enjoy taking with great glee, as if it were a badge of honor to get pasted in the face by one of Martirosyan’s huge shots.

I give Hernandez a lot of credit, he took some shots that would have probably have dropped an elephant in most of the rounds. He not only took the shots, but had this maddening smile on his face after taking the shots, like he was missing a screw or something. By the 5th round, Hernandez was beginning to show swelling under his right eye, which seemed to suggest that it wasn’t healthy for him to be taking the shots he was happily eating.

In the 6th round, Martirosyan was cut on the side of his right eye. The cut had the effect of making Martirosyan fight harder with a sense of greater urgency and by the end of the round he succeeded in staggering Hernandez with a big right hand.

In the 7th and 8th rounds, Martirosyan tagged Hernandez with some tremendous shots, blasting him with hooks and uppercuts. Hernandez, as usual, seemed more than happy to take the punishment, acting as if Martirosyan was bestowing a gift upon him each time he lambasted him with shots to the head. After beating him particularly bad in the 8th round, Martirosyan seemed to lose interest in trying for a knockout and seemed to lessen up in the final two rounds, going into shutdown mode.

With Martirosyan easing up on him, Hernandez gamely tried for his own knockout in the 10th round, holding and hitting and throwing elbows like an old seasoned pro, yet at the end of the 10th, Martirosyan was still standing.