By Scott Gilfoid: In not surprising news, the soon to be 37-year-old former two division world champion Arthur Abraham (45-5, 30 KOs) has suffered an injury, and he won’t be able to fight a rematch against fringe contender Martin Murray (33-4-1, 16 KOs) on November 12 at Monte Carlo.
The German based Abraham suffered an injury during sparring, and won’t be able to fight the 34-year-old Murray in a rematch. It’s just as well, because it wasn’t a huge fight by any means, as Murray has lost two out of his last three fights. One of those loses was to Abraham in November of last year in losing a 12 round split decision.
The whole idea of a rematch between the two fighters, whose careers are floundering at this point, just seemed like a wrong-headed idea from the jump. When you’ve got two aging fighters that are on the brink of career implosion, you don’t jam your sinking careers in reverse mode to fight guys you already fought before. You’ve got to keep moving forward. As legendary Major League baseball player Sachel Paige once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” I think it’s a waste of time for old timer rematches. These guys need to be moving forward with their careers. Murray had his chance against Abraham and he lost. End of story.
Abraham lost his WBO 168lb title to Gilberto Ramirez by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in April of 2015. Since then, Abraham has fought once in beating little known fringe contender Tim Robin Lihaug by an eight round knockout last July. Abraham did not look good in that fight. It was case of Lihaug looking terrible.
Murray revealed the news of Abraham’s injury to his boxing fans on his social media site:
“Just to let you know that my rematch with Abraham is off…due to him being injured. Just in the process of sorting another opponent now. Just to clarify, rematch is off cause Abraham IS injured.”
Murray is still listed as fighting on the November 12 card in Monte Carlo. However, there isn’t much time to find a replacement opponent for him, so it’s likely he’ll be fighting a fodder opponent. To be honest, those are the only types of guys that Murray has been beating in the last year. In beaten losing to George Groves, Arthur Abraham and Gennady Golovkin, Murray has beaten this obscure bunch of fighters: Girogi Beroshvili, Mirze Bajrektarevic, Jose Miguel Tores and Cedric Spera.
I understand the whole purpose of tune-ups, but when your 34-years-old and as advance as Murray is, you don’t take that many tune-ups. That’s just wasting time in your career. I mean, we’re probably going to see Murray take another tune-up on November 12, but I think it’s stupid. Murray doesn’t need tune-ups. He needs to be taking on QUALITY opposition. If Murray can’t beat the good fighters, which appears to be the case, then he needs to either consider retirement or live with being a gate keeper/2nd tier type of fighter. I think Murray’s days of being a contender are about up.
It’s hard to beleive that Murray fought for a world title just last year against middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in February 2015. Golovkin stopped Murray in the 11th round when he finally caught up to him and blasted him out. Murray had been running around the ring for the first 10 rounds, and it took Golovkin some time to catch up to him to knock him out. Since then, Murray has lost to Abraham and Groves. The loss to Groves was a really disappointing performance from Murray, because he spent much of the fight hiding behind his clam-shell guard rather than attacking the very, very vulnerable looking Groves. When Murray did attack Groves, he gave him problems. Unfortunately for Murray, those were rare instances in the fight. He just would not or could not let his hands go. It was sad, because the win was right there in front of him, and all Murray needed to do was attack, fight hard for three minutes of every round, and forget about hiding behind the old clam-shell. Murray just did not want to come out from behind the clam-shell, which is why he lost to Groves and why he lost to Sergio Martinez in the past.