Martin Murray: I’m sick of the sight of Golovkin’s face

By Boxing News - 02/01/2015 - Comments

murray5By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC, #5 WBA middleweight contender Martin Murray (29-1-1, 12 KOs) says he’s sick of seeing WBA Super World 160lb champion Gennady Golovkin’s face after the 32-year-old Murray taped Golovkin’s face to his heavy bag in order to see it constantly during his training for their fight on February 21st at the Salle des Étoiles, Monte Carlo, Monaco.

Apparently, Murray is using Golovkin’s face on his heavy bag for some kind of motivation purposes. Whether it will make any real difference at all when they get inside the ring is unlikely.

No matter how many times that Murray has hit Golovkin’s picture, it’s probably not going to help him when the British fighter gets inside the ring with the real thing on 2/21. The problem is the real Golovkin hits back, and he hits very, very hard compared to the relatively light-hitting Murray.

“We’ve put Golovkin’s face on the punch bag…it’s there every day when we go; I’m sick of the sight of his face to be honest,” Murray said via the Dailymail.co.uk. “I’ve done camps in the past when I’ve gone away for a week then gone home at weekends but nothing like this.”

It’s good that Murray is training hard for this fight against Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs), because he’s going to need to be in the best possible shape of his career to have a chance of making it the full distance with the Kazakhstan fighter. At this point, I think it would be a moral victory for Murray if he makes it the full 12 round distance with Golovkin, because the last person to escape being knocked out by him was Amar Amari in surviving an 8 round beat down in their fight in June of 2008. Amari took a lot of punishment in merely surviving 8 rounds in a one-sided fight.

For Murray to make it the entire fight without getting knocked down would be a huge accomplishment even if he loses every round. At least he wouldn’t be one of Golovkin’s KO victims. But I don’t think Murray will be satisfied with coming to Monte Carlo and losing the fight by staying in survival mode for 12 rounds like he did the last time he fought for a world title against former WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez in their fight in April 2013.

Murray hid behind his high guard for 12 rounds instead of letting his hands go and it cost him the fight. The only positive that Murray could take for the fight is he didn’t get stopped like many of Martinez’s recent opponents, but then again, Murray didn’t really put much of an effort on offense to give himself a chance at winning.

Murray basically hid behind his clam-shell guard and lost the fight by default against Martinez, who suffered a bad hand injury to his left hand early in the fight. Martinez also came into the fight with torn cartilage in his right knee. Murray was facing a guy that didn’t have two good knees or two good hands, and yet he still lost the fight.

Murray says he’s been training with a sparring partner from South Africa who throws a lot of body punches. He doesn’t have Golovkin’s power, but he fights like him, Murray says, and he throws a lot to the body. This suggests that Murray is trying to ready himself to take the huge body shots that Golovkin will likely be nailing him with on February 21st.

Golovkin is usually a head hunter, but when he faces a guy who is hiding behind a clam-shell guard like Murray will likely be doing in this fight, then Golovkin will almost surely take advantage of Murray’s high guard to nail him with shots to the body.

I don’t expect Murray to be able to take more than a round or two of hard body shots before he sinks to the canvas in utter agony like Matthew Macklin did in his three round knockout loss to Golovkin back in June of 2013. The thing is, Macklin ran from Golokvin until getting cornered and stopped in the 3rd round.

Murray doesn’t have the mobility to run, so I see him retreating to the ropes and staying there for a last stand until Golovkin finishes him up with a piercing arrow-like body shot that drops Murray on all fours on the canvas. I see the fight then being stopped without Murray even getting back to his feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQfw_uWw2NM



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