Macklin will take a pounding from Martinez on March 17th

By Boxing News - 01/23/2012 - Comments

Image: Macklin will take a pounding from Martinez on March 17thBy Scott Gilfoid: Middleweight contender Matthew Macklin (28-3, 19 KOs) will get a shot against the best middleweight in the division in WBC Diamond middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (48-2-2, 27 KO’s) on March 17th at Madison Square Garden in New York.

It’s probably going to be a bloodbath for the 29-year-old Macklin if he’s able to last into the second half of the fight. I just don’t think he will. Martinez hits too hard and his with his southpaw stance, he’s going to be nailing Macklin with big left hand bombs from the 1st round.

Unlike Darren Barker, Macklin gets hit a lot and isn’t as sound technically as Barker. This means that Macklin won’t be able survive as long Barker did in his 11th round TKO loss to Martinez last October. Barker was able to survive by moving, jabbing and keeping away from Martinez.

It was purely a survival style of fighting and not one where Barker could actually win the fight using it. Macklin is one of those types of fighters that leads with his face and comes at you in straight lines looking to slug it out. Unfortunately, Macklin has the wrong style for his limited power.

He’s not a big puncher and really should be more of a finesse type fighter that moves around and tries to box his way to a win rather than looking to overpower his opponents. Macklin was able to blast out the mediocre 2nd tier opposition at the domestic level, but his power limitations have been highlighted in his fights against Jamie Moore, Ruben Varon and Felix Sturm.

As far as I’m concerned, those are the only legit 1st tier fighters that Macklin has fought and he never hurt any of those guys. So what’s going to happen on March 17th is that he’s going to go right at Martinez and take some really heavy shots that are going to have him flat on his back in no time flat.

Martinez has become a real slugger in the past two years and has knocked out his last three opponents. The thing is before his fight with Pavlik, Martinez was more of a Roy Jones Jr. type fighter that was content to box and make his opponents look really bad with his fast combinations and hit and run style of fighting. But Martinez seemed to figure out in his win over WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in April 2010, that he has good power on his own and he used that power to really punish Pavlik with hard combinations.

Pavlik’s face looked like a bloody mess by the time the fight ended after 12 rounds. Since that fight, Martinez has been sitting down on his punches much more than he did before that fight and has knocked out his last three opponents. Macklin will be Martinez’s fourth consecutive knockout.



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