Abraham decisions Martin Murray – results

By Boxing News - 11/21/2015 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: As I predicted, WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (44-4, 29 KOs) defeated a constantly clinching #8 WBO challenger Martin Murray (32-3-1, 15 KOs) by a 12 round split decision on Saturday night at the TUI Arena in Hannover, Germany. If Murray would have stopped clinching 24/7, he would have had a chance to win the fight. But it was a huge mistake on Murray’s part to use clinching as a tactic in the fight because it was painfully obvious that he was interrupting the flow of the fight with his constant grabbing and holding.

The final judges’ scores were 115-112, 116-111 for Abraham, and 115-112 for Murray.

Murray showed early on that he was going to clinch Abraham each time he initiated anything on offense. Abraham kept looking at the referee for help. When it became apparent that the referee wasn’t going to control Murray’s constant clinching, he started braining Murray with power shots in the clinch. Murray didn’t like getting hit in the clinch, but it didn’t stop him from continuing to clinch all night long each time Abraham would attempt to get his offense going.

With this loss, Murray is now a 4-time loser in title challenges. I can’t imagine Murray getting yet another shot at a world title. Heck, he was just knocked out earlier this year by IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin in February 2015. It’s starting to get forlorn with the way Murray is being given world title shot after world title fight in losing pretty much each time.

The fight was a winnable one for Murray going into the second half of the fight, but Abraham’s punching power was the difference. Murray staggered Abraham with a looping right hand to the jaw in the 8th round. However, Murray’s constant clinching caught up to him in the 11th round with him losing a point.

Murray was throwing a lot of punches in the first six rounds of the fight, but Abraham did a great job of blocking 99 percent of them. Only occasionally was Murray able to get a shot around Abraham’s guard to land, but even then it wasn’t enough power on Murray’s shots for it to really do much.

In fairness to Murray, he outworked Abraham in the fight, and looked to have landed more shots. However, the lack of power on Murray’s shots was pretty apparent. You could see that Murray’s shots were basically feather dusters compared to Abraham’s, and that really hurt his chances to win the fight.

With this loss, it’s hard to say what Murray should do with his career. He was talking recently about wanting to possibly retire if he were to lose tonight. Well, Murray lost tonight, and I don’t know what he can do. I mean, he’s 33-years-old and has come up short in his world title shots against Felix Sturm, Sergio Martinez, Gennady Golovkin and Abraham. Unless IBF super middleweight champion James DeGale want’s to throw Murray a bone by giving him an undeserved world title shot, I don’t see what Murray can do. Murray and DeGale share the same promoter in Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport. Perhaps Hearn can convince DeGale to let Murray get another title shot.

I think it would look really bad if DeGale and Hearn were to do that, because it would make it look like Murray doesn’t have to do anything to get title shots. Normally, a fighter works his way into a title shot by beating some decent quality fighters. They don’t back into a title shot off of a knockout loss and some wins over squalid opposition. Unfortunately, that’s how Murray got his title shot tonight against Abraham. Murray was knocked out by Golovkin earlier this year, and then he beat three 3rd tier fighters named Mirzet Bajrektarevic, Jose Miguel Torres and George Beroshvili. After those three empty wins, Murray was given another world title fight. It was pretty to see if you ask me, because contenders should have to beat at least one top contender before getting another world title fight after they’ve been whipped like Murray was by Golovkin.

***

Other boxing results on the card:

Deion Jumah UD 6 Fabrizio Leone
Leon Bauer UD 4 Attila Kiss
Alexander Hofmann UD 4 Guerkan Basak
Alexander Peil UD 4 Lukasz Zygmunt
Armin Winer UD 4 Anton Bekish
Patrick Wojcicki TKO 4 Surik Donsdean



Comments are closed.