By Scott Gilfoid: #6 WBC Matthew Macklin (31-6, 20 KOs) says he plans on thinking hard about which direction he should go with his career following a 10th round knockout defeat at the hands of #4 WBC Jorge Sebastian Heiland (25-4-2, 13 KKOs) last Saturday night at the 3 Arena in Dublin, Ireland.
Macklin was knocked out by a single right hand by Heiland in the 10th round, and he was unable to get up from the knockdown in order to continue fighting.
Macklin was able to fight Heiland to a standstill in the first four rounds of the fight. However, after the 4th, Macklin faded badly and was outworked for the remainder of the fight. As the rounds went by, Macklin took more and more punishment from the younger Heiland. By the 7th, Macklin was just taking a beating and not even remotely competitive in the fight. It was only a matter of time before Macklin was stopped by Heiland, because Macklin was far too tired to make a fight of it.
“Right now I don’t know what to do next and I will have to think long and hard about my future,” Macklin said via express.co.uk. “I genuinely felt I had another shot at the world title in me, but I was beaten by the better man on the night and I have to consider what is now the best course of action. I won’t make any decision in haste, but I am aware that I came up short this time and that clearly hurts a lot.”
It was painfully obvious that Macklin wasn’t going to go far in the middleweight division when he recently defeated little known Jose Yebes by a controversial 8 round decision recently. The fact that Macklin had to struggle to beat a mediocre fighter like Yebes told me that Macklin didn’t have anything left in the tank.
Macklin doesn’t have the size, speed or power to move up to super middleweight to try and compete in that weight class, so he’s kind of stuck at 160. If Macklin moves down to 154, he’ll likely be too drained to fight in that weight class.
Heiland is in no better position than Macklin was in terms of trying to win a world title. If Heiland faces WBC champion Miguel Cotto, then he’s going to get obliterated by Cotto. Heiland would be an easy fight for Cotto.
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