By Dan Ambrose: WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (45-2-2, 24 KO’s) has decided to stay at middleweight rather than give up his WBC belt and defend only his WBC junior middleweight title, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Martinez, 35, had to make a choice to defend one title or the other or else risk having it stripped him.

Martinez made the decision to keep the WBC middleweight title earlier on Wednesday and let the WBC know. It was a decision made because Martinez feels that it would be hard for him to take off weight to defend his WBC junior middleweight title now that he’s moved up in weight to the middleweight division.

Martinez has fought twice at middleweight in the past year, losing a narrow 12 round majority decision to Paul Williams in December and then coming back to defeat WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik by a 12 round unanimous decision in April to capture both of Pavlik’s titles. The WBO stripped Martinez because he couldn’t decide which division he was going to be fighting in.

Martinez chose wisely in keeping the WBC middleweight title because there isn’t any potential big fights at that weight right now unless WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto would show interest in fighting Martinez. That’s not likely to happen because Martinez is a fighter that makes people look bad and he would probably be not someone that Cotto would be interested in fighting.

Besides, Martinez doesn’t fight for Top Rank, so it’s doubtful that Cotto, a Top Rank fighter, will ever be matched against Martinez. However, Martinez is willing to come down to 155 pounds for a catch weight fight if there’s someone interesting to fight from the welterweight division like Manny Pacquiao, Andre Berto or Floyd Mayweather Jr. The same goes for the junior middleweight division. Unfortunately, the junior middleweight division is almost completely barren of stars when you exclude Cotto.

Martinez looked outstanding in beating Pavlik in April, showing a lot of skills in battering the hard hitting Pavlik over 12 rounds. Martinez started off fast in the first three rounds and then let off in the middle rounds to give Pavlik some hope. But in the last four rounds, Martinez stepped it up big time, throwing a lot of combinations and battering the bigger, stronger Pavlik. Rather than use his rematch clause which had had in the contract, Pavlik chose to move up in weight rather than risk getting beat by Martinez again.