By Jason Kim: World Boxing Council middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (45-2-2, 24 KO’s) is interested in fighting top junior middleweight contender Alfredo Angulo (19-1, 16 KO’s) if Martinez and his promoter Lou Dibella are unable to put together a fight with Paul Williams. HBO badly wants to see a rematch between Williams and Martinez. The two fighters fought last year in December with Williams winning a controversial 12 round majority decision in a fight that many boxing fans felt that Martinez should have won.

Martinez would like to try and avenge his defeat to Williams. However, Williams won’t more than a 50-50 deal, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. In this case, Dibella and Martinez are going to look for an alternative opponent to fight, and Martinez thinks he’s found the perfect guy to replace Williams with the exciting 27-year-old former Olympian Angulo, whose fights have been shown on HBO for the past year.

Martinez, formerly the WBC junior middleweight champion but now the WBC middleweight title holder, is willing to move down to 155 to fight Angulo at a catch weight to make it easier for him if he has any reservations about moving up.

Martinez never asked for a catch weight when he moved up to 160 recently to challenge WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik for his two titles. Martinez won anyway, dominating Pavlik and beating him by a 12 round decision.

Angulo’s promoter Gary Shaw is also interested in a match-up between Angulo and Martinez.
HBO apparently still would rather put on the Williams-Martinez rematch. However, Dibella isn’t going to be handcuffed to the Williams fight, saying “Gary [Shaw] and I aren’t worried about finding a home for the Martinez against Angulo. HBO wants Martinez to fight Williams, but I’m not having any network tell me there is only one fight I can negotiate. Angulo wants to fight a big name. Sergio is one of the big names. “

In the meantime, unless HBO is able to help put together a deal for a rematch between Williams and Martinez, we could be seeing Martinez face Angulo soon. I think that would be a great fighter, because the Williams-Martinez fight was sloppy at times to watch and the scoring was awful.

Martinez didn’t throw as many punches as Williams, but landed the harder and the cleaner shots. I can see the same thing happening in the rematch. It will come down to how the judges decide to score the strength of the punches or if they’re more impressed by the sheer volume of punches landed like last time when they gave Williams the win.