By Dan Ambrose: 40-year-old Sergio Martinez (51-3-2, 28 KOs) hasn’t fought since being stopped in the 10th round last year in June of 2014 by Miguel Cotto. Martinez says he wants to return to the ring for a final farewell fight, but the injuries to his right knee is keeping him from getting back into action.
The injury is so bad that it’s difficult for Martinez to go about everyday life. He reportedly has a crushed meniscus in his knee. It’s unclear if this injury was there for the Cotto fight. Martinez looked like his right knee wasn’t stable in that fight, as each time he was hit the knee would wobble.
Martinez didn’t look good even before he was hurt. The moment the fight started it looked like he didn’t have the ability to move that he once had. Before the Cotto fight, Martinez was coming off of a 14 month layoff with two knee surgeries on his right knee. Under those kind of conditions, it would have been far better for Martinez to have taken a couple of tune-up fights to see where his knee was in terms of strength.
“I want to keep boxing, but this injuries are complicating even my daily life. I only will fight if I feel better,” Sergio said via TyC Sports of Argentina. “My meniscus are crashed. I have to wear insoles on my shoes to walk correctly, and not to feel pain. So For now I can’t go back to train.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if Martinez had that same knee problem when he fought Cotto. What was strange about the Cotto-Martinez fight was how Cotto’s trainer Freddie Roach trying to claim afterwards that Martinez was at his best for the fight, and that Cotto only won the fight due to the great game plan that he had put together. As unstable as Martinez’s right knee looked in that fight, it’s hard to believe that anyone would believe that Martniez was 100 percent. It just looked like Martinez shouldn’t have been out there fighting with his knee looking that bad. Why did he rush back to the ring to fight?
Cotto isn’t new to fighting a guy coming off of a serious injury and a long layoff. In December 2011, Cotto defeated Antonio Margarito by a 9th round technical decision after the fight was abruptly halted due to Margarito’s surgically repaired right eye swelling closed.
This is the same eye that Margarito had gone through three surgical procedures in the year before the fight. Margarito hadn’t fought an entire year at the time that he fought a rematch against Cotto in 2011. Why Margarito didn’t take a couple of tune-up bouts to see whether his surgically repaired eye would hold up under the heat of a battle is unclear.
“I want to keep boxing, but these injuries are more complicated than we expected,” Martinez said. “During the next weeks I think I will be able to take a decision.”
If Martinez winds up missing too much time from the ring then his career decision will be made for him whether to retire or not.
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