Arum interested in matching Mikey Garcia vs. Rocky Martinez next for WBO 130 lb. title

By Boxing News - 06/16/2013 - Comments

garcia7867By Chris Williams: It didn’t take Bob Arum of Top Rank very long to point out the fight he wants next for his fighter Mikey Garcia (32-0, 27 KO’s) after his 4th round TKO victory over Juan Manuel Lopez (33-3, 30 KO’s) last night in Dallas, Texas.

Arum is saying he’d like to match Mikey up against WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez (27-1-2, 16 KO’s) next. For Arum, this is a no-brainer because he promotes Rocky Martinez as well, so it would be an in house Top Rank fight for him. Both guys are stable fighters, and it’s easy fight to make.

Arum said to esnewsreporting.com “I think another Puerto Rican, maybe Rocky Martinez.”

I guess the idea is to have another Mexico vs. Puerto Rico rivalry thing going so that it’ll bring in more fans to watch the fight on HBO like last night’s fight between the Mexican Mikey and the Puerto Rican Juanma.

Rocky Martinez is kind of a shaky champion, though, and it’s probably not going to be any better than the Lopez-Garcia fight. Martinez fought to a draw last January against Juan Carlos Burgos, and Martinez has had two 12 round split decisions victories over Diego Magdaleno and Miguel Beltran Jr.

Martinez was also beaten by Ricky Burns by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2010. Martinez is a good fighter, but not really all that great and probably not nearly good enough to make for a good fight against Mikey.

That’s obviously not going to stop Arum from making this fight because like I said, he promotes both guys and it’ll attract casual boxing fans from their fan bases. However, it’s not the fight that you would look at as a potential 50-50 fight for Mikey because Martinez is barely beating the guys he’s facing now, and he’s not going to be able to beat someone even better than those guys like Mikey Garcia.

I think a better match-up would be Mikey vs. IBF super featherweight Argeniz Mendez or Mikey vs. Takashi Uchiyama. Those guys are better than Rocky Martinez and I think it would be a better fight for boxing fans instead of seeing Mikey in another mismatch against a guy that is kind of flawed and barely holding on like Rocky Martinez.

Sergio Thompson would also be a really good match-up for Mikey because he can punch and he’d keep Mikey on his toes. If he makes a mistake against Thompson, he’d get knocked out. I’m not sure if Arum likes the idea of Mikey getting beaten; hence he’s going to steer him towards a beatable guy.



Comments are closed.