By William Mackay: Lightweight contender John Murray (30-0, 18 KO’s) defeated Ukrainian Andriy Kudryavtsev (34-8, 15 KO’s) by a 9th round TKO on Saturday night at the Robin Park Centre, Wigan, Lancashire. However, Murray looked sloppy, slow of hand and foot, showed no head movement, and looked very basic in beating a fighter that was made to order for Murray. If this fight was supposed to show the world that Murray is ready to take on one of the world champions, then I think Murray failed miserably in this performance, because he doesn’t look ready to fight any of the current lightweight champions, as far as I can tell.

Heck, I think Murray isn’t even ready to fight lightweight contenders like Brandon Rios, Ali Funeka, Robert Guerrero, Juan Diaz or Kevin Mitchell. Murray overwhelmed the aging 33-year-old Kudryavtsev with his high volume attack on Saturday night, but that’s not really saying much because Kudryavtsev isn’t even ranked in the top tier. Murray beat a 2nd tier lightweight and looked sloppy as hell in doing so.

Based on this performance, I wouldn’t recommend Murray moving up and trying to take one of the champions anytime soon. Murray needs to start from the bottom and try to beat one of the lower ranked lightweights and then work from there upwards until he either gets taken apart or wins a title. As of now, though, I think Murray would be badly beaten if he were to take on one of the champions or one of the top five contenders. I think Juan Diaz would destroy Murray, and he’s ranked at number #10 by the WBO. Urbano Antillon would be a lot of problems for Murray as well, he’s ranked number #8 by the IBF.

I know Murray wants to get a nice payday and would like to challenge for a title as soon as possible, but he needs to do this the right way. He can’t be going from fighting a 2nd tier guy like Kudryavtsev, looking sloppy as anything, and then going into a title shot against one of the champions. That would be murder for Murray, looking as slow, lethargic, one-laced and limited as he did against Kudryavtsev. Sure, Murray can ignore reason and shoot for a title right now, but I think he’d be stupid to do that. He needs a lot of improvement in so many different areas it’s not even funny.

I’d really hate to see what a guy like Rios would do to Murray. There’s talk of Murray fighting Victor Ortiz on the undercard of the Amir Khan vs. Marcos Maidana on December 11th. I’m telling you if Murray takes that fight, he’s going to be destroyed by Ortiz. There’s a huge difference in hand speed and power between these two fighters. I would respect Murray if he took the fight, but I think he would be crazy because he’ll lose badly.