Martirosyan vs. Davis on Chavez-Lee undercard on Saturday

By Boxing News - 06/12/2012 - Comments

Image: Martirosyan vs. Davis on Chavez-Lee undercard on SaturdayBy Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan (32-0, 20 KO’s) will continue his long slow march to a title shot this Saturday night when he faces 33-year-old journeyman Ryan Davis (24-9-3, 9 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout on the undercard of the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Andy Lee fight at the Sun Bowl, in El Paso, Texas.

Martirosyan, #2 WBO, #3 WBC, #10 IBF, hasn’t exactly been tearing up the junior middleweight division since turning pro in 2005. He’s turned down fights against Alfredo Angulo and most recently Erislandy Lara to face instead guys like 41-year-old Troy Lowry, Richard Gutierrez, Saul Roman, Bladimir Hernandez and Joe Greene.

There seems to be a failure to launch for some reason with Martirosyan. It looks like he’s not going to face any real threat to him until he gets a title shot one of these days. The WBC offered Martirosyan a chance to fight Lara in a WBC final eliminator bout with the winner becoming the mandatory challenger to WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez. But Martirosyan turned down the fight.

He’s not likely to get a shot at Alvarez now if that was something that he ever wanted. Martirosyan’s best bet now is to wait around until he’s given a shot against the WBO champion Zaurbek Baysangurov. In other words, wait around until he can take on arguably the weakest of the 154 pound champions and then hope for the best. I think Martirosyan probably can beat Baysangurov, and likely milk the title for a couple of years against the mostly weak opposition the WBO has ranked in their top 15.

That’s pretty much the only way I see Martirosyan getting a title shot anytime soon. It’s too bad he won’t face someone like Lara, because it would be nice to see how he does against him. Even James Kirkland would be a nice change of pace. I think Kirkland would knock Martirosyan out, but it would still be interesting to see Martirosyan finally taking on someone good after all these years.

Martirosyan will have no problem beating Davis on Saturday. This is just another easy fodder opponent being brought in to make Martirosyan look good.



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