By Dan Ambrose: Sickened by how the World Boxing Council told him that he was going to be able to fight WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. next in March, but then changed their minds to allow Chavez Jr. to go ahead and fight Marco Antonio Rubio instead in February next year, former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (48-2-2, 27 KO’s) reportedly said today that he will no longer defend the WBC Diamond strap that was given to him by the WBC and will instead defend the Ring middleweight title he won against Kelly Pavlik last year in April 2010.

Martinez also slammed Chavez Jr. for not fighting him, as well as HBO, who he reportedly won’t be fighting on their network any longer.

In a press conference held today in Martinez’s home country of Bueno Aires, Argentina, Martinez said this as quoted by fighthype.com:

“I’m not going to defend the Diamond belt anymore. The only title I’m going to defend from now on was the one I conquered after beating Kelly Pavlik, which is the Ring Magazine title..I won’t ever defend the WBC [title] again. I’m not a hostage. I hate the cowardice in which Julio Cesar Chavez behaves, aas well as his coach Freddie Roach, his promoter Bob Arum, avoiding every day the fight with me and building a boxing world which is a lie. I never thought that a world champion could avoid somebody in this way. Unfortunately, this sort of attitude can hurt our sport. I won my belts the honest way. I’m proud of having had them and having represented the WBC.”

If Martinez does decide to back away and pretty much give up, he’s doing Chavez Jr. a really big favor and hurting himself. He needs to keep the pressure up to get the fight he wants. In addition, it’s not a wise move for Martinez stop fighting on HBO because of all this. He’s still recognized as the real champion in the middleweight division regardless of who the WBC has as the current champion. Chavez Jr. is seen a paper champion among knowledgeable boxing fans. It’s only casual fans who don’t understand that he’s not considered the best fighter in the division.

Martinez was stripped of his WBC middleweight title this year after he fought Sergiy Dzinziruk in March of 2011. This was the opponent that HBO wanted Martinez to fight instead of Sebastian Zbik, Martinez’s mandatory challenger. This led to Martinez being stripped of his title for agreeing to fight Dzinziruk. Getting his WBC title back has proven to be difficult for Martinez, as he’s been unable to get a fight against the new WBC champion Chavez Jr., who beat Zbik by a close 12 round decision last June.

Martinez’s requests for a fight with Chavez Jr. have been ignored by Chavez’s promoter Bob Arum, and so finally Martinez spoke with WBC president Jose Sulaiman and was told he would get the fight against Chavez.

However, Sulaiman and the WBC then changed their minds and decided to let Chavez Jr. fight Rubio instead of facing the arguably much more dangerous Martinez next. This has got Martinez livid because he feels he was the rightful fighter that was supposed to be challenging for the WBC title next, not Rubio.