By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (48-2-2, 27 KO’s) has failed in trying to line up a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao for his next fight in 2012. Instead Martinez has to settle for middleweight contender Matthew Macklin (28-3, 19 KOs) for his next fight on March 17th in New York. This about the same quality level as Martinez’s last fight against Darren Barker, if not worse.

Macklin is mostly a slugger with limited conditioning and power. He’s like a slugger without huge power and who has a problem fading in the second half of his fights. We some of that in his loss to WBA World middleweight champion Felix Sturm in his last bout last June, and we also saw Macklin run out of gas against Jamie Moore in a 10th round TKO in 2006.

Other than those two fights, Macklin’s opposition has been incredibly poor, which obviously has kept him winning until he raised the bar and was beaten when he stepped it up against Sturm in his last fight.

This should be a fairly easy fight for Martinez because Macklin is there to be hit and he doesn’t have a lot of power. He’ll look to come out fast and try to overwhelm Martinez with punches. This of course will make things easy for Martinez to get a quick knockout. Macklin turns red when hit and starts gassing as early as the 3rd.

As poor as his defense is, I doubt he’ll last longer than that. He’ll walk into something and they’ll likely have to cart him out of the ring. I don’t think like this fight to be honest. I’d like to see Martinez facing better opposition because Macklin is too flawed and he’s already coming off a loss in his last fight. I’d rather see Martinez face Andy Lee, Sebastian Zbik, Fernando Guerrero or Marco Antonio Rubio. I see any one of those fighters putting up a better fight than Macklin. It’s too easy with him.