By Chris Williams: Former two division world champion Sergio Martinez (48-2-2, 27 KO’s) says he’s hoping to get a big fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in late 2012.
Before that, Martinez will likely be facing Mathew Macklin on March 17th, and possibly WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. if he doesn’t vacate his title first. Either way, 2012 promises to be a good year for the 36-year-old Martinez if everything goes as he hopes they will.
Martinez had the chance to watch WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao recently struggle to a controversial 12 round decision win over Juan Manuel Marquez and Martinez was less than impressed with what he saw of the Filipino star.
In a candid interview at examiner.com, Martinez said “I saw what everybody saw, that Pacquiao lost. The real pound for pound is Top Rank. They create a figure that doesn’t exist. Pacquiao is not the pound for pound. Pacquiao is a fake. When has he fought a real fighter besides Marquez? And when he fought a real fighter, you see what happened with Marquez. ..He’s [Pacquiao] a fake number one.”
Martinez is talking about the matchmaking that Top Rank has done to put Pacquiao in winnable fights using catchweights, older fighters, weight drained fighters or guys that have recently come off terrible beatings. Martinez doesn’t see anything real about Pacquiao and would like to fight him to show the world how good he is.
Thus far Pacquiao’s management has been cool to the idea of putting their star in with Martinez even though Martinez has offered to meet Pacquiao at a 150 pound catchweight.
If Pacquiao’s promoter did agree to putting him in with Martinez it likely wouldn’t be much of a fight. Pacquiao can no longer move around the ring like he used to do in order to evade punishment, and he’s never been good defensively to begin with. But now that his legs are gone and he’s a stationary fighter, Pacquiao would be a sitting duck for a fighter like Martinez. Pacquiao wouldn’t last long taking the huge bone-crunching left hands from Martinez. I suspect it might not make it past the 3rd or 4th rounds, because Martinez hits too hard and he’d have so many areas where he could knock Pacquiao out. If he aimed to the body, Pacquiao would cave in. If he went for the head, we could see a one punch knockout like Martinez did against Paul Williams.
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