By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten WBO junior middleweight champion Sergiy Dzinziruk (37-0, 23 KO’s) is the underdog going into his March 12th fight against Sergio Martinez (46-2-2, 25 KO’s) at the Foxwoods Resort Casino, in Mashantucket, Connecticut. The 35-year-old Martinez, who is considered by many boxing fans and writers to be the best fighter in the middleweight division at this time, is considered the favorite in this match-up to capture the vacant WBC Diamond middleweight title, which has been thrown in for this fight by the World Boxing Council.

For the 34-year-old Dzinziruk, this fight will be the closest thing to a huge fight that’s experienced during his 12-year pro career. Although he’s held down the WBO title for the past six years, Dzinziruk has yet to face a big-named opponent until now. Even this fight isn’t quite as huge as it could be because Martinez is just now starting to get popular and hasn’t yet achieved the kind of popularity as other fighters like Floyd Mayweather Jr., Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquiao enjoy. But never the less, this is about as good as it gets for Dzinziruk unless he wants to try and go after former WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik if he can get by Martinez on 3/12.

With few people really giving Dzinziruk much of a chance at beating Martinez, this takes a lot of the pressure off of Dzinziruk so that anything he does will be without the same kind of weight that it would be if he were to be coming into this fight expected to win. Dzinziruk can then go out and try and impress and win new fans in the U.S by boxing Martinez from the outside using his jab and looking to make him look bad. Dzinziruk has one of the best jabs in all of boxing and he’s going to be showing that in this fight. The question is whether that’s enough to beat a guy like Martinez. It might take more than just a superb jab to defeat Martinez because he’s smart, moves a lot and has excellent one-punch power.