By Scott Gilfoid: Matthew Macklin’s December 7th scheduled fight against junior middleweight contender Willie Nelson is now down the drain due to Nelson suffering an elbow injury that will keep prevent him from taking the fight at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA.
According to ESPN, Macklin (29-5, 20 KO’s) was offered a fight against the unbeaten Russian Matt Korovbov (21-0, 12 KO’s), but Macklin didn’t want the fight due to him having only a short period of time to prepare for his southpaw style. It’s perhaps a good thing that Macklin didn’t take that fight because I think Korobov would have had an excellent chance of beating Macklin badly, even if Macklin was well prepared for the fight. I just see Korobov as being too strong for Macklin and we might have seen a repeat of Macklin’s 3rd round knockout loss to Gennady Golovkin.
HBO offered Macklin a fight against once beaten Max Bursak (28-1-1, 12 KO’s), who is arguably a lesser puncher than Korobov, and Macklin was interested in that fight. However, Bursak’s trainer said no to the idea of taking the fight because there wasn’t enough time to get him ready.
Macklin has lost 3 out of his last 4 fights, and while you can excuse away the defeats due to him having been beaten by three good fighters in Felix Sturm, Sergio Martinez and Golovkin, there’s no ignoring the fact that Macklin is starting to get beaten left and right. Obviously they’re going to have to bring Macklin back a level or two to find guys that he can actually beat because if they keep putting him in with good top tier opposition, we could see Macklin turn into a high level journeyman type of fighter before long.
There’s no word about who will be the next potential opponent for Macklin, but with each day that goes by it increases the chance that it’s not going to be anyone remotely good that will tell you anything about Macklin if he beats him. Maybe that’s what Macklin needs? Maybe he needs a series of lesser guys to get his confidence back and to help build him up. However, I’m not sure if Macklin’s fights will be televised on HBO after this next one on December 7th, unless he’s facing good opposition.
Perhaps he’ll still be shown on undercards, but HBO is pretty strict about the fights that they accept for their network, and they might not like the idea of Macklin facing weak opposition. At 31, Macklin needs to step it up a gear if he wants to accomplish anything with his career. Given the way he’s losing to the top middleweights, he might wants to lose some weight and go down to the junior middleweight division to try and see if he can do anything in that weight class. I just don’t think there’s anything for Macklin at 160. He’s not a big puncher, and he tends to win more on his high volume work rate. The problem is the top middleweights have such good power that Macklin has problems sticking around long enough to try and wear these guys out. As such, I think it’s time for him to go down to 154 and see if there’s anything for him at junior middleweight.
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