By William Mackay: EBU lightweight champion John Murray (30-0, 18 KO’s) faces Spanish challenger Karim El Quarzghari (11-1-2, 4 KO’s) this Saturday night at the York Hall in Bethnal Green, London. For Murray, this should be another easy win but not the kind of fight that he really needs if he wants to get the attention of the boxing world. Murray, 26, needs to stop wasting time defending this EBU strap against little known opponents over and over again while the champions are facing highly ranked contenders on the world scene.

Hopefully, Murray loses the EBU strap after this pointless fight and starts stepping it up against more notable opponents like Robert Guerrero, Urbano Antillon, and Antonio DeMarco. The training wheels have to come off at some point, don’t they? Murray should win this Saturday night, but so what? He’s found a beatable guy to fight in the 2nd tier and if Murray can’t beat this guy then he really needs to forget about taking on top contenders or champions in the lightweight division.

Murray wants to challenge for the title against Juan Manuel Marquez but facing guys like El Ouazghari isn’t how you go about putting pressure on Marquez to make the fight happen. No one has heard of this Spanish guy and few will care if Murray beats him. This is why it’s important that Murray star taking on a better class of fighter at some point in his career. Maybe he’ll get beat, but at least he’ll be finally stepping it up. I don’t see Murray as a future champion though, but at least he’ll get a title shot if he can fight and beat some contenders instead of the 2nd tier guys he’s been fighting.