By Dan Ambrose: Former World Boxing Council (WBC) middleweight champion Sergio Martinez is reportedly livid that he can’t get important fights put together with Top Rank fighters Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Manny Pacquiao, and Miguel Cotto no matter how hard he tries to put the fights together.
Martinez, 36, is willing to melt down to 150lbs or even lower to get a fight against WBO welterweight champion Pacquiao, and yet he’s still ignored. Cotto has shown little interest in facing him even if Martinez was willing to go back down to 154.
Chavez Jr. talks as if he’s interested in facing Martinez, but then uses the out excuse that it’s up to his promoter who he fights. Chavez’s promoter Bob Arum promotes Cotto and Pacquiao as well, and it appears that Arum isn’t interested in seeing any of them take on the powerful southpaw slugger.
It was thought that Martinez was finally on the brink of getting a fight against Chavez Jr. but that fight didn’t happen when Chavez contacted World Boxing Council president Jose Sulaiman and asked him for permission to make a voluntary defense on February 4th against Marco Antonio Rubio and Sulaiman gave Chavez permission to do this.
It seems as if Martinez is ignored or skipped over everywhere it turns, and while these fighters are getting good money facing arguably lesser fighters, Martinez has to settle for less.
Martinez may get a chance at Chavez Jr. later on in 2012 if he doesn’t try and get another voluntary title defense or if Chavez doesn’t vacate the title first.
I think Martinez has next to no chance of ever getting fights against Pacquiao and Cotto no matter what catchweight he agrees to. I think it’s a case of him having too much power for either of them. It doesn’t matter if those two guys were to out-box Martinez, because sooner or later Martinez would land one of his big bombs and it would likely leave Cotto and Pacquiao on the canvas wondering what hit them.
They won’t take that risk against Martinez unless he ages to the point where he’s no longer a threat, kind of like with 40-year-old Shane Mosley.
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