Martirosyan says “yes” to Lara bout

By Boxing News - 07/05/2012 - Comments

Image: Martirosyan says "yes" to Lara boutBy Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan (32-0, 20 KO’s) has sealed his fate by agreeing to fight #3 WBC Erislandy Lara (17-1-1, 11 KO’s) in a World Boxing Council ordered WBC 154 pound elimination bout with the winner to become the mandatory challenger to WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez.

Martirosyan, who has fought pretty much entirely soft opponents his entire seven year pro career, said on his twitter today “Guys, there is no ifs. I said ‘Yes’ to the Lara fight already. 100 percent on board. I just want to focus on Saturday night, then we get back to Lara.”

The fight that Martirosyan is refereeing to is his mismatch against 33-year-old Ryan Davis (24-9-3, 9 KO’s) on the undercard of the Nonito Donaire vs. Jeffrey Mathebula fight at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California. The card will be televised by HBO, although I’m not sure that the Martirosyan-Davis mismatch will be aired or not. It’s one of your standard Martirosyan mismatches, so I’m not sure why HBO would want to televise this ugly fight. Hopefully they don’t bother and just focus on the Mathebula-Donaire and Kelly Pavlik vs. Will Rosinsky fights, which should be a lot more competitive.

It’s very surprising that Martirosyan has decided to accept the fight with Lara, because this kind of goes against the grain of the kind of opponents Martirosyan usually fights. He’s trained by Freddie Roach, but the training wheels have remained on year after year despite Martirosyan having had a high ranking for ages.

This fight would appear to be a mismatch because Martirosyan doesn’t have Lara’s hand speed, power, movement or boxing ability. It’s likely to be a lot like Lara’s fight against Freddy Hernandez.

I’m not counting on the Martirosyan-Lara fight taking place. I’ll believe it when I see Martirosyan in the ring standing ac cross from Lara. Until then, I’m skeptical about Martirosyan actually taking the fight.



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