By Scott Gilfoid: Warriors Boxing won Friday’s purse bid for the IBF heavyweight clash between Charles Martin (22-0-1, 20 KOs) and Vyacheslav Glazkov (21-0-1, 13 KOs) with a winning bid of $1,238,000. The bid beat out Main Events’ bid of $888,000. Main Events represents the 31-year-old Glazkov. Warriors Boxing works with adviser Al Haymon. What this means is that we will likely be seeing the Martin vs. Glazkov fight on Premier Boxing Champions in early 2016. The Glazkov vs. Martin fight will take place next month on January 16th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Glazkov and Martin will be fighting for the vacant IBF title that was recently stripped from Tyson Fury after he chose not to defend it against Glazkov, the #1 IBF heavyweight mandatory challenger. Fury didn’t have much of a choice though, because he signed a rematch clause in his contract with former heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko before their November 28th fight last month.
After losing to Fury, Wladimir chose to use his rematch clause to get an immediate rematch. It was Fury’s mistake for signing the rematch clause. He didn’t have to sign one, because he was the WBO mandatory challenger.
“We are thrilled that Czar is getting his world title fight right away and in our own backyard! The turn around is quick, but both fighters will have the same amount of time to prepare so it’s fair. On top of fighting for his first world title, Glazkov is going to get more money for this fight than we were offered for any other fight and we won’t be tied to any future options. This is a great deal for everyone involved,” said Glazkov’s promoter Kathy Duva from Main Events to Fightnews.com.
This is going to be a really difficult fight for the 6’3″ Glazkov to win, because he’s a small heavyweight without much in the way of punching power at all. He’s not going to be able to connect with a lot of his shots against the taller 6’5″ southpaw Martin, and I can see this fight really getting out of hand quickly for Glazkov.
Glazkov has a nice seven-fight winning streak going since his controversial 10 round draw against Malik Scott in 2013. Besides the controversial draw against Scott, Glazkov has controversial wins over Steve Cunningham and Derric Rossy in the last two years.
Breaking: Warriors Boxing (Haymon) won Glazkov-Martin IBF heavyweight purse bid at $1,238,000. Only other bidder was Main Events, $888,000.
— Dan Rafael (@danrafaelespn) December 18, 2015
I saw all three of those fights and I had Glazkov losing all of them. I don’t think he’s a very good heavyweight at all, and I’m just wondering how much longer he can keep getting controversial decisions given to him before he finally runs out of luck and tastes defeat for the first time. I see Glazkov’s record as 19-3. If he does not fight at a higher level than he has been fighting, I see him going 19-4 after he faces the 6’5” Martin.
In Martin’s last four fights, he’s beaten Vincente Sanchez, Tom Dallas, Raphael Zumbano Love, and Damon McCreary. Yeah, Martin’s opposition has been nothing short of terrible, but he is still a very good fighter and more than capable of beating Glazkov unless we see another controversial decision involving the Ukrainian fighter. I cannot see that happening.
“The split on the Glazkov-Martin purse bid is 65% for Glazkov, 35% for Martin so that makes the fact that Martin side won interesting,” Dan Rafael said on his Twitter.
The winner of the Glazkov-Martin fight will be the new IBF heavyweight title. I suspect that they’ll whole off that title and just focus on making simple defenses of the belt rather than doing something brave and fighting a unification fight against WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder or IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.
It would be a pity if that happens, because the heavyweight division already has WBA “regular” champion Ruslan Chagaev playing it safe by fighting guys like Francesco Pianeta and Lucas Browne. If you get the winner of the Martin vs. Glazkov also playing it safe, then the heavyweight division is going to be really fractured and marginalized in my view.
It will be just one good heavyweight, Wilder, and a bunch of underperforming heavyweights playing it safe. We still do not know what kind of heavyweight champion Fury is going to be though because he has the rematch against Wladimir to get out of the way.
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