By Scott Gilfoid: #1 WBC Martin Murray (29-2-1, 12 KOs) says he was surprised by the punching power of WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (32-0, 29 KOs) in their fight last Saturday night on February 21st at the Salle des Étoiles, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Murray, 32, expected Golovkin to be a harder puncher than he turned out to be. Murray does say that Golovkin is a strong puncher, but that he expected him to be more powerful than he turned out to be.
As it was, Murray was still knocked out in the 11th round by Golovkin, so obviously the Kazakhstan fighter had enough power to knock him out. Golovkin knocked Murray down three times, and that definitely shows that Golovkin had enough power to keep putting Murray on his backside over and over.
“To be honest, and I know it might sound a bit daft because I was up and down like a yoyo, I thought he was going to hit a bit harder than he did,” Murray said via ESPN.co.uk. “It wasn’t so much his punching power, which is strong – don’t get me wrong, he hits well – but I was constantly on the back foot and on the ropes. Not through choice, it was just that I couldn’t really get any momentum or pressure going forward.”
The last part of what Murray was saying was him explain why he himself couldn’t generate enough power to make the fight a competitive one. Instead of standing his ground in the middle of the ring in order to get the most punching power on his shots, Murray was running, holding and fighting with his back against the ropes.
This enabled Golovkin to tee off on the British fighter. However, in a lot of cases, Golovkin had to throw at a moving target because of Murray’s running from the battlefield. But even when Murray did land some of his best shots in the first two rounds, it was clear that he didn’t have enough power to get Golovkin’s respect.
Would it have been in Murray’s best interest to stand and trade in the center of the ring instead of Murray running and holding all night. I’d say yes, but the outcome would have been the same. Murray didn’t have the power to make it a competitive bout, and his clam-shell defense was bypassed with Golovkin’s uppercuts that constantly came underneath Murray’s high guard.
Instead of Murray adapting his defense to nullify Golovkin’s uppercuts, Murray stubbornly stuck with the clam-shell, and this led to Golovkin bloodying Murray’s nose badly in the 5th when he tagged Murray with an uppercut that drove his nose upwards. Murray’s nose would continue to bleed for the remainder of the fight.
“It’s quite hard to generate power like that when your back’s to the ropes. We did catch him and I had some success when I was in the centre of the ring, but I just couldn’t maintain that pressure going forward,” Murray said. “I’m more confident now that I will become world champion one day.”
I don’t know how Murray can become a future world champion, because he’s getting up there in age, and there’s no one that he stands a chance of beating among the current champions at 160.
First of all, Murray probably won’t get another world title shot until he’s at least 34 or possibly 35. I mean, he’s come up short three times in world title matches, and I can’t see the sanctioning bodies letting Murray get another chance in the near future unless he beats a live body this time.
In the past, these are the guys that Murray beat in order to get his three title shots: Domenico Spada, Max Bursak, Ishmael Tetteh, Sergey Khomitsky, Jorge Navarro, Karim Achour, Nick Blackwell, John Anderson Carvalho, Carlos Nascimento and Peter Mitrevski Jnr. I rate those guys as weak fighters, and I’m surprised that the sanctioning bodies didn’t require that Murray at least beat someone like Marco Antonio Rubio, David Lemieux, Hassan N’Dam, Willie Monroe, Curtis Stevens, and Tureano Johnson.
I rate those guys as much, much better fighters than the guys that Murray beat to get his three world title shots. The big question is why aren’t the sanctioning bodies requiring the contenders to face the best in the division before they get world title shots? If the sanctioning bodies did require the contenders to fight the best, then we wouldn’t see so many sick mismatches like the Golovkin-Murray fight turned out to be.
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