By Scott Gilfoid: #3 IBF super bantamweight contender Carl Frampton (16-0, 11 KO’s) could soon be facing Kiko Martinez again in a rematch for his IBF super bantamweight title in the next future if Frampton can get past his next opponent #4 IBF Jeremy Parodi (35-1-1, 8 KO’s) in their fight on October 19th at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
Frampton might have to win at least one more fight after the Parodi bout, and then he’ll be back in the ring with Martinez.
Martinez beat IBF super bantamweight champion Jhonatan Romero last Saturday night by a 6th round TKO in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Romero came into the fight with an impressive looking resume, but unfortunately pretty much all of his wins were against unknown opposition from the 2nd and 3rd tiers. I figured that it was a fluff record, and that he’d kicked out by Martinez, and that’s exactly what happened.
As good as Martinez looked against Romero, I don’t see him beating Frampton in a rematch unless Martinez can fix his leaky defense. Martinez dominated Frampton in the exchanges, and he had the Irish fighter on the run big time. But Martinez got careless and walked into a big shot from Frampton in the 9th round, and that was it.
Frampton’s opponent Jeremy Parodi is kind of in the same boat as Romero was when he faced Martinez. Parodi’s record looks impressive, but it’s built on no name fluff opponents, and there’s no real quality as far as the eye can see. The one halfway decent fighter on Parodi’s resume is Arsen Martirosyan, and he beat Parodi. The thing is Kiko Martinez knocked out Arsen Martirosyan last March in a 12th round TKO. That’s not exactly appealing knowing the history behind Parodi.
Some of these sanctioning bodies need to a lot better job of ranking their fighters, because when you get guys ranked high based on empty wins over poor opposition all that does is set up mismatches when those guys eventually step up against someone halfway decent.
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