Sturm says no offer was made to Martin Murray

By Boxing News - 01/09/2014 - Comments

murray64 - CopyBy Scott Gilfoid: In response to the news from the Daily Mail that a fight offer had been made to Martin Murray, IBF middleweight champion Felix Sturm took to twitter to deny that any offer whatsoever had been made to the 31-year-old Murray for a fight. Ouch, that’s got to hurt Murray, because a fight between him and Sturm would have at least given him a chance to capture a world title at 160.

Without Sturm throwing him a bone, Murray is faced with bleak prospects of capturing a strap. I mean, what do think is going to happen when Murray eventually has to make a decision whether to fight WBA champion Gennady Golovkin or not? If he takes the fight, Murray will almost surely get knocked out.

If he vacates his WBA interim strap and turns tail, he’ll look really bad in the eyes of boxing fans. That’s why the Sturm fight was a way out of it, because he could maybe get lucky and beat Sturm, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about fighting the dangerous Golovkin.

Sturm said this on his twitter today: “There is no truth to the current rumor that an offer was made to someone for my next fight.”

Well there it is. Murray’s not getting the Sturm fight. That’s too bad, isn’t it? It was a fight that you could have called a tossup unless it were to take place in Germany. In that case, I’d have given Murray a puncher’s chance of winning it.

Without Sturm, Murray is going to have to stay busy until he eventually faces Golovkin in either 2014 or 2015. I honestly think Murray needs to give up his ranking with the World Boxing Association and go in another direction. He can wait out WBC champion Sergio Martinez until he retires and then go after his strap, or Murray can slowly climb the IBF rankings until he can fight for that title against Sturm or whoever has the belt by the time he gets ranked high enough to fight for the title in a year or two.

I wouldn’t recommend that Murray try fighting WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin because he’s too quick, too power and much too athletic for Murray to be able to compete against him.



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