By Dan Ambrose: A fight between Miguel Beltran Jr. (27-1, 17 KO’s) and Roman Martinez (25-1, 16 KO’s) will be taking place on September 15th on the undercard of the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Sergio Martinez fight at the Thomas & Mack Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Martinez-Beltran will be fighting for the vacant WBO super featherweight title formerly held by Adrien Broner, who recently lost the title earlier this month when he failed to make weight for his fight against Vicente Escobedo.
The winner of the Beltran Jr-Martinez fight will have to defend the WBO title against #2 WBO Juan Carlos Burgos after that.
Beltran Jr. is ranked #8 by the WBO, whereas Martinez is ranked #9. Neither fighter would have been much of a threat to Broner had he stayed in the division. But now that he’s gone, the two of them can scrap over the vacant World Boxing Organization title that he formerly had.
Martinez, a former WBO super featherweight champion, lost his title to Ricky Burns in a 12 round decision loss in Sepember 2010. Martinez, 29, has fought only once since then, beating Daniel Attah by a 12 round unanimous decision last October after sitting idle for a little more than a year. Martinez has now been out of the ring for the past 10 months and by the time he faces Beltran Jr. next month it’ll be almost a year since he last fought. That’s not good and you have to wonder about Martinez’s commitment to boxing.
Beltran Jr. hasn’t faced a lot of quality opposition during his career. He has a win over Miguel Roman, a 2nd round no contest to Juan Carlos Salgado, but that’s about it. The other fights have come against mostly weaker opposition and no one to really give him a proper test. Martinez, although terribly rusty, could give a good fight to Beltran Jr. and we’ll be able to see where he’s at in terms of talent.
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