Hatton sees victory for Murray over Sergio Martinez on April 27th

By Boxing News - 02/18/2013 - Comments

murray5By Allan Fox: Promoter Ricky Hatton believes unbeaten Martin Murray (25-0-1, 11 KO’s) is facing WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (50-2-2, 28 KO’s) at the right time to pick him off and grab his WBC strap when they face each other in two months on April 27th at the Estadio Jose Amalfitani, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Hatton said to hattonboxing.com “Any great champion has to come to an end at some point. Martinez is 38, plus he’s had a couple of injuries. In his last fight he was hanging on for dear life against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. So it’s come at the right time and the right fight with Martin.”

While the 30-year-old Murray is younger than the soon to be 38-year-old Martinez, Murray is still the underdog in this fight. There are not too many boxing experts picking Murray to win this fight.

Martinez turns 38 on February 21st, and he’s starting to show signs of aging. In his last fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. last September, Martinez broke his left hand in the 4th round, and tore cartilage in his right knee in the 12th. Martinez still won the fight by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision, but he was on the verge of being stopped in the 12th after getting knocked down by Chavez Jr.

You can say that Martinez got cocky and thought he could stand directly in front of the younger, bigger and stronger Chavez Jr. Whatever the case, Martinez was lucky to survive the round and win the fight because if there had been another 30 seconds left in the round, Chavez Jr. likely would have taken him out.

Murray has the power the power and skills to give Martinez more problems than Chavez Jr. Murray is capable of fighting on the move, and he’s a good counter puncher as well. He can make contact a lot more than Chavez Jr. did last September.

Martinez didn’t have much to worry about from Chavez Jr. because he really didn’t throw many punches until the 12th round when he hurt Martinez. But Murray is going to be a much more difficult opponent because he’ll be letting his hands go a lot more.

Whether Murray can handle getting hit with Martinez’s big left hand and right hook power shots is another matter. That’s something Murray is going to have to find out. He’s got the skills to give Martinez problems, but what’s unknown is whether he has the chin to be able to withstand the return fire from the faster and stronger Martinez.

Getting hit by Martinez is no picnic as we’ve seen from Martinez’s past knockout victims Paul Williams, Matthew Macklin, Darren Barker and Sergiy Dzinziruk. His shots explode on impact and it’s very hard to take those kinds of power shots without going down.

Chavez Jr. was able to handle Martinez’s power alright, but he’s got a really good chin and he ended up taking a real beating in that fight. Kelly Pavlik was another fighter that went the distance with Martinez, but Pavlik looked like a bloody mess by the fight the fight was over.



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