By Scott Gilfoid: I hate to completely rule out a victory for #8 WBO Martin Murray (32-2-1, 15 KOs) for his fight tonight against WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham (43-4, 29 KOs), but I just don’t see how on Earth that the light hitting 33-year-old Murray is going to be able to win this fight at the TUI Arena in Hannover, Germany.

For Murray to have a chance to win, he’ll need to stop running and stand his ground and beat Abraham in a dog fight. But without the needed punching power or chin to fight that kind of fight, Murray is going into battle with six empty chambers in the cylinder.

Murray is basically shooting with blanks tonight against a guy with an elephant gun in Abraham. Granted, Abraham is incapable of throwing a lot of punches due to his stamina issues, but the shots he does throw will likely impress the judges and do major damage to Murray’s face if he’s standing there trying to make a fight of it.

I just hope for Murray’s stake that he realizes that this is a title fight and not a track meet, because he’s not going to win the fight running around the ring for 11 rounds like we saw from him last February in his 11th round knockout loss to IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.

It looked to me that Murray came out in the 1st round and immediately discovered that he didn’t have the talent or the chin to get the job done, so he then put on his track shoes and decided to try and survive by running all night long.

If Murray does that tonight, he’ll stink up the joint something fierce in Hannover. I hope Murray doesn’t do that, because he really needs to go out on his shield like a true warrior rather than looking for the safe way out of the fight by running all over creation.

“This is not the Abraham of old, I am convinced,” analyst Johnny Nelson said to skysports.com. “I’ve never been so certain that the British challenger comes back as a world champion. I think Murray wins on points. Definitely.”

Nelson makes it sound good, but it’s just so hard to believe given how awful Murray looked in his fights against Golovkin, Felix Sturm and Sergio Martinez. Those were the best opponents of Murray’s career, and he fought poorly in all three fights.

Murray can’t beat a guy like Abraham by covering up with his clam-shell defense and waiting him out all night long for him to stop throwing punches, because Abraham will win too many rounds that way.

If all Murray is going to do is cover up and wait for Abraham to unload his artillery on him all night long, then this is going to be a very, very easy fight for Abraham, because he loves to fight guys that cover up and take turns throwing shots back and forth. Those are the types of guys that Abraham does really well against.

Murray hasn’t done a whole heck of a lot since his loss to Golovkin in February. Murray has beaten the followed 3rd tier opponents selected for him by his promoter Eddie Hearn: Jose Miguel Torres, Mirzet Bajrektarevic, and George Beroshvili. Needless to say, those are just awful opponents for someone to be getting a title shot off of. I mean, you’d really like to think that Murray would have fought better opponents than this to prove that he deserves a world title shot, because that looks like Murray was just given the title shot by Abraham and his promoters at Sauerland Events based off of nothing wins.

What happened to the old fashioned idea of fighters getting world title shots based on merit? It’s hard for me to understand because in other sports, you only get chances for the championship level matches/games by beating the best. That’s the way it should be, right? But when you see a guy like Murray getting another world title shot after beating Bajrektarevic, and Beroshvili, it’s just really off putting to say the least.

It’s like an NFL football team getting put into the Super Bowl after beating three consecutive cellar dwellers with records of 0-16. Murray was whipped by Gennady Golovkin in February of this year. Shouldn’t Murray at least have to fight his way back to another world title fight by beating some of the top 10 contenders?