By Jason Kim: Number #4 ranked WBC junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan (30-0, 19 KO’s) struggled to beat the hard hitting Saul Roman (34-9, 29 KO’s) last Saturday night in a 7th round TKO victory at the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California. Martirosyan found out the hard way how tough Roman was, as Martirosyan was knocked down in the 1st round, cut badly under his right eye in the 5th and took a lot of hard shots from Roman throughout the fight until finally Martirosyan took Roman out with a furious assault in the 7th round.
After the fight, Martirosyan’s trainer Freddie Roach called out WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez on Martirosyan’s behalf, saying “Everybody is talking about how great [Alvarez] is. I think Vanes would knock him out in one round. Vanes won the eliminator to face him. Let’s see how good Canelo really is.”
Roach seems to be trying to jump Martirosyan ahead of the line because Alvarez already has a fight coming up against Ryan Rhodes on June 18th, and after that Alvarez will likely go after a big name like Ricardo Mayorga for a nice payday. Mayorga is a bigger name than Martirosyan and much better at drumming up interest for a fight than him as well. If Roach is in a hurry to have his fighter get a title shot, he might want to try and get Martirosyan a fight with WBO junior middleweight champion Sergiy Dzinziruk instead.
Obviously, the money and the attention that Martirosyan would get for a fight against Dzinziruk would likely be less than for a fight against Alvarez. But besides that, Dzinziruk would be problems for Martirosyan because he’s got great boxing skills and he might be too good for him. Martirosyan didn’t look very special against Roman. Indeed, he looked skinny, easy to hit and not that big of a puncher. I think Alvarez would beat Martirosyan, as would Dzinziruk. If I was Roach, instead of calling out fighters that my fighter wasn’t ready to beat, I would try to teach him some defense and how to move his head. Martirosyan has got a lot of problems on defense that need fixing.
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