By Scott Gilfoid: If you’ve had the chance to watch any of Martin Murray’s past fights the thing that immediately jumps out at you is the way he uses a high guard almost at all times to protect his head.
Murray has this guard that picks off most of the incoming fire from his opponents when they’re head-hunting a lot like former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez did in his win over Murray in 2013.
For the fighters who have failed to adapt to Murray’s high guard, they’ve had problems with him. He’s obviously been very fortunate to not have had to face any guys that actually throw body shots like the ones he’ll be seeing on February 21st.
Murray will be facing WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs) at the Salle des Étoiles, in Monte Carlo, Monaco. Golovkin has an excellent trainer Abel Sanchez, who has adapted his fighting style from the straight up European fighting style that Golovkin previously used until 2010 to more of a head and body puncher.
To be sure, Golovkin still throws a lot of head shots, but he also likes to take advantage of his opponents when he sees that they’re using a high guard and not protecting their midsection at all.
In the case of Murray, he spends long periods of time in his fights with his fights with his clam shell high guard protecting his head. He’ll throw an occasional jab and right hand, but for the most part he’s totally committed to covering up his head so that he doesn’t take a big shot square.
This fighting style is likely going to lead to Murray taking an enormous amount of body shots when he gets inside the ring with Golovkin on February 21st, because Golovkin isn’t going to just spend the entire night hitting Murray on the gloves the way his opponents have done in the past.
Instead, you can expect Golovkin to go to the body and look to take Murray out with a hard shot to his midsection the same way he did against Matthew Macklin. I’m sure Murray prides himself on his ability to take body shots.
Well, we’re going to get to see whether Murray can take body shots from one of the hardest punchers in the middleweight division in Golovkin in this fight. I don’t expect Murray to be able to take Golovkin’s body shots for long without him dropping for the 10 count. However, even if he is able to handle Golovkin’s body punching, Murray will almost surely drop his gloves to protect his painful waist.
When that happens you can expect to see Golovkin to switch from body to head to take Murray out with a vicious head shot. If Murray is stubborn about it and decides to just cover his head without protecting his body, then he’ll eventually get knocked out with a body shot. There’s no way he’s going to be able to take 12 rounds with Golovkin nailing him again and again with big body shots.
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