By Dan Ambrose: Undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. needs to set his sights on fighting WBC/WBO middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (45-2-2, 24 KO’s) next instead of wasting his time and patience on trying to put together a fight with Manny Pacquiao. Martinez, 35, is reportedly willing to take the random blood tests that Mayweather wants. This is just another, among many, fighters that are willing to agree to the random blood testing that Mayweather wants in order to get a fight with him.
Mayweather previously was hoping to get a mega fight with Pacquiao, but the chances of that fight happening are slim unless Mayweather agrees to accept only partial testing for performance enhancing drugs. Pacquiao won’t likely give in on the testing and will still want a window of some kind between the fight and the last day of testing before he’ll agree to a fight with Mayweather. But Martinez, who has gained a lot of new boxing fans in the past year with his fights against Paul Williams, Kermit Cintron and Kelly Pavlik, is more than willing to take the tests.
This would match a boxer against a boxer. Martinez has a style of fighting somewhat like Mayweather with his counter punching, fast hand speed and ability to move well around the ring. Martinez recently totally outclassed WBC/WBO middleweight champion Pavlik, beating him by a 12 round decision last month on April 17th. Martinez stayed conservative in the first eight rounds, mainly landing one or two punches at a time.
But in the last four rounds, Martinez opened up with his offense and began to pour in combinations and min flurries to beat Pavlik up and leave him a bloody mess by the end of the fight. Martinez wasn’t sure if he would be forced to fight a rematch with Pavlik, as Kelly had a rematch clause in his contract with Martinez. However, Pavlik announced on Monday that he wouldn’t be using the rematch clause and would go in a different direction.
This leaves Martinez free to fight Mayweather, if Floyd wants the fight. Given that he won’t likely get Pacquiao to agree to the full random blood testing that he wants, Mayweather needs to go after Martinez next and see if he can capture his middleweight belts. It will be a tough fight for Mayweather, because the southpaw Martinez is three inches taller and a bigger fighter, but it’s one that boxing fans would surely like to see.
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