By Sean McDaniel: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn revealed on Sky Ringside the other night that he’s in deep talks with WBO middleweight champion Dmitriy Pirog’s management in setting up a clash between Hearn’s fighter middleweight contender Darren Barker (23-1, 14 KO’s) and Pirog (19-0, 15 KO’s) for a fight that would take place on HBO. I think it would be a good fight for both guys.

Pirog, 31, hasn’t fought since stopping contender Gennady Martirosyan in the 10th round last September in his second defense of his World Boxing Organization title. Pirog won the vacant title with a 5th round TKO win over previously highly hyped contender Daniel Jacobs in July 2010. He followed that win with a 12 round unanimous decision win over Javier Fanciso Macial in March 2011.

Barker, 29, lost his last fight against Sergio Martinez last October, losing by an 11th round TKO in a fairly close fight on two of the judges’ scorecards. The problem Barker had in that fight was that he fought way too conservatively and failed to take the chances he needed to in order to win. He fought well enough to lose and Martinez never got out of second gear in beating him.

In a fight against Pirog, Barker might have problems with all of the angles that Pirog would be showing him, not to mention his big power as well. Pirog is like a white Floyd Mayweather Jr. He does a lot of the same things that Mayweather, only slower and with more power.

It would be tough on Barker to fight a guy that is kind of all over the place giving a lot of different looks in terms of angles and changing his fighting stance from orthodox to southpaw constantly. I’m sure Barker has sparred with a lot of guys like this in the past, but the difference here is Pirog has got a lot of power and would be fighting at a much faster pace than what Martinez set out for Barker in their fight.