By Jason Kim: Yesterday, top junior middleweight contender Alfredo Angulo turned down $750,000 to fight WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez because Angulo wanted $1 million for the fight. Since that wasn’t going to happen, Martinez is now looking to fight a rematch against Paul Williams. HBO wants the fight, boxing fans want the fight and it should be an exciting one if Williams and Martinez’s promoters can work out the deal to make this fight happen. The fight will be taking place in November, not October, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Martinez lost by 12 round majority decision to Williams last year in December, in a fight that many boxing fans felt that Martinez should have won.

Both Martinez and Williams traded knockdowns early on, and the fight eventually came down to the judges awarding Williams the decision based on his higher punch output rather than scoring the fight for Martinez because of his cleaner landing shots. The rematch will likely present the same case for the judges. Williams, with his high work rate, will outland Martinez, but his shots won’t have the same power and will be more of the slapping type variety. It’s going to be a tough fight to score unless Williams can somehow score a knockdown or two to make it more conclusive. Martinez was hoping to get a fight with Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather Jr., but neither of those two fighters showed any interest in fighting him.

HBO really wanted the Angulo-Martinez fight to happen. Angulo seems to have overestimated his value in this case. Given that the highest purse of his career was $350,000 when Angulo was beaten by Kermit Cintron in 2009, $750,000 would seem more than reasonable to me. Angulo has been seen on HBO a number of times in the past year, but mainly against beatable fighters and not guys like Sergio Martinez and Paul Williams. Had Angulo beaten fighters like them in the past, even one of them, I can see him asking and possibly getting $1 million for a fight against Martinez. But Angulo still hasn’t beaten anyone yet, aside from Joachim Alcine, a Canadian based fighter. Angulo needs to beat some quality fighters before he’s up there with the big boys. I think he’ll make it but he still has to be willing to fight for slightly less than he wants right now until he gets a win over a major star.