By Scott Gilfoid: After hanging around for seven years as a pro and failing twice in two previous world title shots, Britain’s Martin Murray (29-1-1, 12 KOs) will be getting a third title shot two months from now against what many boxing fans see as the best fighter in the 160 pound division in WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs) on February 21st at the Salle des etoiles, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Some fans would say that the 32-year-old Murray doesn’t deserve another world title shot. After all, he was beaten just last year by former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, and since then Murray has three wins over pedestrian opposition in Ishmael Tetteh, Max Bursak and Domenico Spada.
Whatever the case, the fight is made and Golovkin will be facing Murray whether he deserves another title shot or not.
As awful as Murray looked in his last fight against Spada last October, Murray is going to need to fight the perfect fight in order to keep from getting knocked out by Golovkin or reduced to a punching bag.
We saw in the Spada fight that Murray likes to spend a lot of time with his back against the ropes just covering up instead of making a fight of it. I’m afraid that kind of fighting style is not going to work well against a talent like Golovkin.
You can say the same thing about Murray’s habit of hiding behind his high clam shell guard to protect his head from power shots. We saw Murray use that same clam-shell for the entire 12 rounds against Sergio Martinez, and it cost him the fight because he wasn’t throwing anything back at him.
Martinez was able to hit Murray at will. Sure, some of the shots were blocked by Murray due to him holding his hands in front of his head the entire fight, but many of the punches leaked threw and did damage. I think it’s pretty obvious that Murray will be using the same clam-shell guard against Golovkin for the entire fight.
This probably isn’t going to work for Murray, because Golovkin likes to throw body shots, and as we saw in his stoppage win over Matthew Macklin, Golovkin is a murderous body puncher. What this means is that unless Murray comes up with another plan besides hiding behind then old clam-shell, he’s going to get taken out with a body shot by Golovkin at some point in the fight.
The smart thing for Murray to do in the Golovkin fight would be for him to come out with both guns blazing looking to surprise Golovkin and score a knockout himself. Yeah, it’s a pretty much hopeless plan destined for failure for Murray, but I believe it’s the only thing he can really do if he wants to keep from getting blasted out in the same fashion that Macklin was.
I think it’s better for Murray to go out on his shield by actually fighting instead of hiding behind his clam shell until the bitter end. At least Murray would have a tiny chance of winning, and he would be lionized by his loyal boxing fans for at least trying to win instead of what we saw from him in his fights against Sergio Martinez and Felix Sturm.
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