Martinez Decisions Garcia

By Boxing News - 03/03/2008 - Comments

By Manuel Perez: Undefeated super flyweight contender Raul Martinez (22-0, 13 KOs) won a lopsided 10-round unanimous decision over Benjamin Garcia (12-10-3, 13 KOs) to win the International Boxing Association bantamweight title at the Municipal Auditorium, in Harlingen, Texas. Garcia was knocked down twice in the third round and once in the fifth. The final judges’ scores were 100-87, 99-88 and 98-89. The fight was never really competitive at all, as Martinez was able to control the bout with his jab alone.

However, most of the knockdowns occurred due to Garcia’s gambling, brawling style of offense as he’d rush in throwing punches, leaving himself wide open for counter shots from Martinez, who took advantage of Garcia’s wild style of fighting to carve him up. In terms of excitement and action, I saw this fight as more exciting than the Rafael Marquez vs. Israel Vazquez III bout, in that neither Garcia or Martinez ran out of gas like Marquez seemingly did in the second half of his bout with Vazquez.

Despite it being a mostly one-sided fight, with Martinez dominating the action, Garcia made it interesting throughout due to his constant attacks, his fast handspeed, and his dogged determination to try and get the win even if it meant that he was going to take a beating in the process. For that, I got a lot of respect for him as a fighter. He gave it his all and even if it wasn’t good enough, Martinez knew that he was in a tough fight and wasn’t able to take it easy for a minute.

The first two rounds were close, with both fighters exchanging fiercely on the inside. Martinez prefers to stay on the outside using his excellent jab to control the action, yet Garcia wouldn’t allow it as he came inside and stayed there for extended periods of time.

In the third round, Garcia walked into a right hand that dropped him. He was only up for several moments before he was knocked down again by a right hand. This time, he played it safe staying away from Martinez to last out the round.

In the 5th round, Martinez landed another big right hand that dropped Garcia to the canvas. He attempted to finish Garcia, but ran out of time before he could land anything substantial.

In rounds six through ten, both fighters traded big shots with the action flowing back and forth as neither of them were willing to give ground. Martinez was supposed to walk through Garcia, but found it very tough to keep him off of him. However, in the end, Martinez’s jab and right hand was the telling factor in the bout. If not for that, Garcia would have been able to handle Martinez with little problems. Unfortunately, Garcia, a light puncher, had no huge offensive arsenal of his own to fire back at Martinez and had to use volume punching to accomplish the same thing.