Charles Martin’s ring return possible for September

By Boxing News - 07/29/2016 - Comments

Image: Charles Martin's ring return possible for September

By Allan Fox: Former IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin (23-1-1 21 KOs) will be resuming his once promising career possibly in September against the likes of Gerald Washington, Dominic Breazeale, Travis Kauffman or Eric Molina, according to RingTV. Martin, 30, was knocked out in the 2nd round last April by Anthony Joshua in London, England.

It was a disappointing loss for the 6’5” Martin, because he never really got his offense un-tracked after getting dropped by a right hand from Joshua. The southpaw Martin looked like he was intimidated by the 6’6” former 2012 Olympic gold medalist Joshua from the 1st round, and he never let his hands go the way he needed to for him to be competitive.

“He may or may not do a tune-up fight at the end of September,” said Charles Martin’s manager Borao to RingTV.com on. “And then a Top-15 opponent in November or December? And then hopefully another big shot in the first or second quarter of next year.”

Martin’s manager was targeting Chris Arreola as a possible opponent for him, but Arreola went ahead and fought WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder on July 16 and was stopped in the 8th round.

Martin has a lot of work to do for him to fix all the flaws in his game. He’s 30-years-old and has a lot of areas in his game that need to be worked on for him to be able to compete against the top guys. It’s not only Joshua that can expose Martin. Lesser heavyweights likely would do the same thing. As bad as Martin looked against Joshua, it makes you think that it was a mistake that Martin was able to pick up the IBF title in the first place.

The International Boxing Federation made it easy for Martin to win their title by having him fight Vyacheslav Glazkov for their belt rather than someone bigger and arguably more talented like Luis Ortiz. If Martin had to go through Ortiz to win the IBF title, then he probably would have never won the belt.

“Mentally, he wasn’t there,” said Boroa in trying to explain Martin’s loss to Joshua.
Boroa is right about Martin not being there mentally for the Joshua fight, but one gets the sense that even if he was mentally engaged for that fight, he still would have lost. Martin just looked like he didn’t have the skills needed for him to compete against the likes of Joshua. Boxing skills take many years to develop, and unfortunately for Martin, he’s not a young guy.