By Scott Gilfoid: Commonwealth super bantamweight champion Carl Frampton (15-0, 10 KO’s) will be taking his first real test of his four year pro career against EBU super bantamweight champion Kiko Martinez (27-3, 19 KO’s) on February 9th at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
This is going to be a really tough one for the 25-year-old Frampton because Martinez has power, speed, defensive skills and a huge heart. Martinez has no quit in him and he’s got a really good chin. What this means is that Martinez will be able to take Frampton’s big power shots without any problem, but then he’ll be answering back with his own big shots and I don’t know that Frampton can take a hard shot as of yet.
Frampton supposedly stepped it up in his last fight against former IBF super bantamweight champion Steve Molitor last September, but Molitor isn’t what he once and he couldn’t put in the same effort he did earlier in his career when he was a good fighter.
Frampton stopped him in the 6th round in a pretty much one-sided fight. In Frampton’s fight before that, he had problems in beating Raul Hirales, beating him by a 12 round decision but failing to impress. That was a fight where Frampton fought someone with better power than him and he didn’t seem to like it very much.
In this fight the power is about equal between Frampton and Martinez, but what isn’t equal is the experience difference. Martinez is the much better experienced fighter and he’s got the skills to give Frampton a lot of problems in this fight if he can get his shots off. Martinez can’t stand in front of Frampton unless he’s throwing because Frampton likes to take the lead if his opponents aren’t letting their hands go.
The key to victory for Martinez is to unload with nonstop combinations each time Frampton goes at him. By doing this he’ll out Frampton on the defense and he won’t throw as many power shots.
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