By William Mackay: EBU lightweight champion John Murray (30-0, 10 KO’s) would like nothing better than to have a world championship fight fall directly into his lap with the new WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (27-0-1, 20 KO’s) giving him a shot at his title in his next fight. The chances of that happening are about zero, because Murray isn’t ranked in the top 15 by the WBA, and isn’t well known enough in the United States for Rios to even consider facing him. And besides that, Murray would likely be in way over his head in a fight against Rios and the bout would likely be a dull mismatch with Rios destroying the slow-handed Murray.

Murray said this in a press release sent out today: “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I want to be world champion, and if I’m going to do that, then Rios is the kind of guy I need to beat.”

I hate to be the one to break this to Murray but if he wants to get a shot against Rios, he needs to scrap his EBU title and start facing world level fighters instead of the EBU fodder that Murray has been facing. Fighting 2nd tier guys over and over again isn’t going to make Murray a popular fighter on the world level. He’s got to face top contenders that people have actually heard of instead of the unknown obscure guys that Murray has build his inflated record on.

Murray has been fighting the likes of Gary Buckland, Scott Lawton and Andriy Kudryavtsev, fighters that aren’t exactly household names. If Murray wants a title shot against Rios, he needs to take on Robert Guerrero, Michael Katsidis, Lenny Zappavigna, Paulus Moses, Miguel Acosta, Ali Funeka, Mike Alvarado, Juan Diaz, Antonio DeMarco, Anthony Peterson, Urbano Antillon, Marco Antonio Barrera and Jorge Barrios instead of the Euro level fighters. It’s nice that Murray won the trinket, but it’s time to get serious about his career and throw that thing away and start facing 1st tier fighters for a change. The EBU title is like a bunch of lead weight for Murray as he’s trying to tread his way upstream. It’s a waste of time.