Sergio Martinez wants a rematch with Antonio Margarito

By Boxing News - 04/20/2010 - Comments

Image: Sergio Martinez wants a rematch with Antonio MargaritoBy Chris Williams: The new WBC/WBO middleweight champion Sergio Martinez says he wants a rematch with Antonio Margarito, according to an interview from Martinez with Greg Leon at Boxing Talk. Martinez was stopped in the 7th round by Margarito 10 years ago, and wants to settle the score with Margarito. A fight between the two of them would be huge bout if Margarito can get his boxing license back. Bob Arum from Top Rank would likely be able to put the fight in the Cowboy Stadium where it would probably do at least as good as Manny Pacquiao’s recent bout against Joshua Clottey, which brought in 50,000 fans.

Martinez, however, has to wait and see what happens with Kelly Pavlik, who he defeated last Saturday by a 12 round decision. Pavlik has a rematch clause in the contract and has 30 days to decide if he wants to use it or now. Thus far, he still hasn’t made a decision, but if he does go for it then Martinez will have to wait on a fight with Margarito for a little while until the Pavlik fight is taken care of. After the Margarito fight, Martinez wants to fight a rematch with Paul Williams. Last year, Williams defeated Martinez by a controversial 12 round decision, a bout which many boxing fans felt that Martinez won.

Martinez thinks that Williams was the tougher fight than his bout with Pavlik, although he thinks that Pavlik, because of his power, was the more dangerous fighter. Martinez says that it was planned for him to start strong against Pavlik in the first four rounds, and then let off during the middle rounds of the fight to let Pavlik come on and get some confidence. The plan was for Martinez to come on in the last part of the fight and take the championships rounds.

This is exactly what Martinez did in the fight. Speaking of the last part of the fight, Martinez said “My trainer told me not to double up on my punches until the 8th round.” That explains why Martinez didn’t throw a lot of combinations until the last four rounds of the fight. Before that, Martinez mostly threw single shots and 1-2 combinations. Once the fight got into the 9th, Martinez suddenly opened up with a barrage of punches, tagging a shocked looking Pavlik repeatedly with punches to the head and leaving him a bloody mess by the end of the 9th.

That was one of the most one-sided rounds I had seen between two championship fighters that didn’t involve a knockdown. Pavlik was no match for Martinez’s speed and seemed unprepared for the sudden onslaught of punches from Martinez. It was sad to see Pavlik getting so badly punished. By the end of the fight, Pavlik looked like he had been in a terrible car crash as he walked around the ring with a masque of blood covering his face.

Even when the blood was wiped up, Pavlik looked like he had taken a bad beating. Pavlik hopefully will do the wise thing and decline the rematch. If he wants to win a middleweight title, there’s easier ways of going about it than fighting Martinez. That’s a fight that I don’t see Pavlik ever winning.

Martinez says he plans on keeping his WBC junior middleweight title as well as his middleweight belts, and defend titles in both divisions. That might be hard to do, but it will be interesting to see how well he does. The good thing about it is if Martinez does eventually get beat, he will still have a title or titles in the other division.

Martinez says he will be back in training in the next 10 days, and he’s interested in a future fight with Miguel Cotto. However, he points out that Cotto has to get by Yuri Foreman first, but he thinks it would be a “tremendous unification” bout at light middleweight.



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