By Dan Ambrose: In one of Freddie Roach’s more laughable comments he’s made in quite some time he’s saying that former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez is being protected from his fighter Peter Quillin (25-0, 19 KO’s). That’s pretty funny because the 28-year-old Quillin is no threat to Martinez and would be nothing more than another knockout victim for Martinez if he were to take the time to fight him.

Quillin has been fighting at super middleweight, and the fact that he’s moving down in weight to the middleweight division is more of an indication that he doesn’t have the skills to compete against the better super middleweights like Andre Ward, Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler than it is Quillin being a true middleweight.

Quillin is a huge super middleweight at 6’1″, and I can’t believe the guy is going to be fighting at middleweight. It’s going to be interesting to see if he can make the 160 pound middleweight limit without draining himself over and over.

Roach said this to boxingfutures.com: “We [Quillin] said we’ll fight Sergio Martinez right now but he doesnt want to talk about that, he says he has non one to fight but we’ll fight you anytime, any place…It looks to me like they’re protecting Martinez.”

Quillin is a decent contender but he lacks a left hand, and he doesn’t throw combinations. His left is like a vestigial feature that is no longer used. He’s all right hand and only a pot shot fighter. Quillin lacks any kind of an inside game and would be at the mercy of someone like Martinez. Roach is smart to have Quillin move down to the middleweight division because he would likely be beaten again and again at super middleweight. However, Roach needs to be aiming him towards his WBC middleweight paper champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr rather than someone that can actually fight like Martinez. I think a bout between Chavez Jr and Quillin would be a toss up. Both fighters are incredibly flawed, and Roach hasn’t improved either enough to dominate.