Martin Murray says he won’t be nice guy with Golovkin on Saturday night

By Boxing News - 02/18/2015 - Comments

Final Press Conference(Photos credit: Will Hart/HBO) By Scott Gilfoid: Britain’s Martin Murray (29-1-1, 12 KOs) says he won’t be playing mister nice guy on Saturday night when he gets inside the ring with WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs) in their fight on February 21st at the Salle des Étoiles, Monte Carlo, Monaco.

Murray, 32, says he’ll be playing it nice during their last press conference before the fight, but once he gets Golovkin in the ring “that’s not going to stop me wanting to rip his head off.”

What’s interesting about the tough talk from Murray is that he’s not a puncher or ever close to being a puncher. He’s just a big fighter who tends to go into a shell when he fights to keep from getting hit. He’s faced a couple of aging champions in Sergio Martinez and Felix Sturm in the past, and was unable to beat them.

The fact that Murray couldn’t even beat a past his prime Martinez and Sturm strongly suggests that he’s going to be way, way out of his element on Saturday night when he gets in the ring with the powerful Golovkin.

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On Saturday night, Murray doesn’t plan on playing it nice with Golovkin. Whether this means that Murray will actually try and have a go at it by punching with Golovkin remains to be seen.

I’m sure that Golovkin and his trainer Abel Sanchez would like nothing better than to have Murray come out of his shell and start slugging with him so that he can have open targets for him to land his pulverizing punches. However, the odds of Murray fighting in a different style than he usually does are low, because Murray tends to always fight defensively when facing higher quality opposition.

Against the 2nd and 3rd tier guys, Murray comes out of his clam-shell and looks to punch with them. But against the only two decent fighters that Murray has ever faced during his career in fights against an older Sturm and Sergio Martinez, Murray failed to do enough in those fights to get the victory due to him spending most of the fights covering up behind his guard instead of throwing punches.

Murray says “He [Golovkin] wants to take something from me and I want to hurt him.”

I don’t know how Murray can hurt Golovkin with his shots without him having the power to accomplish the task. I personally rate Murray’s power as being no better than past Golovkin opponent Nobuhiro Ishida. Just how Murray will be able to hurt Golovkin with the little power that he has is the big question.

Murray is pretty tough on the inside, as we saw in his last fight against Domenico Spada last October. On more than one occasion, I saw Murray’s head collide with Spada in that fight. I’m sure it was an accident on Murray’s part, but I can see how that might have hurt Spada. As such, you can say that Murray is capable of hurting Golovkin, but I don’t see Murray as being capable of hurting him with his punches. I think he can hurt Golovkin with his head if they collide in close, but that’s pretty the extent of Murray’s ability to hurt him in this fight.

“Some of Golovkin’s opponents might give him too much respect, and they might be all smiles and handshakes at the press conference, but that’s just stupid,” Murray said. “They obviously didn’t grow up where I grew up. This is a fight and I can be just as nasty as anybody when I have to be.”

I really don’t think it matters where either fighter grew up. Golovkin obviously grew up in an area that wasn’t known for being a wealthy place in Kazakhstan, and I’m sure that it was a plenty tough place for him to be growing up. But whether a person is from a tough area or not, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to win.

We’ve seen plenty of examples of fighters coming from tough areas and yet they still wind up getting beaten. It’s not about where a fighter grows up; it’s about the talent that they have.

If you’ve got the advantage in power, speed, and experience and overall defensive ability the way Golovkin has, it doesn’t matter if your opponent is bragging about him coming from a tough area. The fact of the matter is if Murray doesn’t have the talent to win on Saturday night, then he’s going to lose the fight to Golovkin.

Murray can talk about where he grew up until he’s blue in the face, but if he doesn’t have the talent, then he’s probably going to get whipped badly by Golovkin in a one-sided fashion and wind up being his 29th knockout victim. Golovkin wants a knockout on Saturday, and that’s likely the only part Murray will play in this fight.



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