By Scott Gilfoid: Irish middleweight Matthew Macklin (28-3, 19 KO’s) faces the best fighter in the middleweight division on March 17th in his fight against WBC Diamond middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (48-2-2, 27 KO’s) at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York, U.S. You can forget about the other middleweight champions – Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, Felix Sturm, Daniel Geale and Dmitriy Pirog – because Martinez is the REAL champion. He’s got some made up Diamond strap, but that’s just a fluff belt. Martinez is The Ring middleweight champion and that’s the only real title that counts here in boxing in my view.
Macklin is getting his shot against Martinez on the back of his 12 round split decisionn loss to Sturm last June. Macklin lost that fight and deserved to lose it in a big way because he ran out of gas after only four rounds and did zero to prove that he was the better fighter. Afterwards, a lot of boxing fans cried and complained that Macklin deserved to win, so here we are with Macklin and Martinez instead of Sturm vs. Macklin. That’s a fight that makes a heck of a lot more sense than seeing Macklin get a fight against the best fighter in the division off of a loss. It should have weeded Macklin out and made it necessary for him to get two or three solid wins before being given another world title shot, but unfortunately this is how boxing nowadays. You’re getting fighters like Macklin getting title shots off of losses instead of wins.
Macklin is what he is – he’s a one-packed straight ahead type guy that comes at you in straight lines, both forward and back. There’s not much to say about him other than he likes to try and blitz his opponents early by starting quick and trying to overwhelm them with punches until they collapse. The problem with that is he tires himself out so quickly that he starts to take punishment. Macklin has arguably only faced two good fighters in his career – James Moore and Felix Sturm – and lost to both of them. The rest of the fighters were either 2nd tier or flawed first tier guys nowhere near the same talent level as Martinez.
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