Martin Murray vs. Dmitry Chudinov on November 12

By Boxing News - 10/31/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: The struggling #13 WBC super middleweight fringe contender Martin Murray (33-4-1, 16 KOs) will be fighting next month against replacement opponent Dmitry Chudinov (19-1-2, 12 KOs) on November 12 at the Salle des Étoiles, Monte Carlo.

Murray, 34, was scheduled previously to fight 36-year-old former two division world champion Arthur Abraham in a rematch on November 12, but Abraham suffered an injury and couldn’t take the fight.

Instead, 30-year-old Chudinov will drop down from the 175lb division to take the fight. Chudinov is the older brother of former World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Fedor Chudinov, who recently lost his WBA title by a very, very controversial 12 round majority decision to Felix Sturm last February in Germany.

Murray wasn’t too happy about losing out on his rematch with Abraham, as you can imagine. However, at least Murray will still be fighting on the November 12th card in Monte Carlo. Now all he needs to do is to make sure he doesn’t lose to Chudinov. The is the same Chudinov that was stopped in the 12th round last year by Chris Eubank Jr. in February 2015.

It was a pretty one-sided fight, although Eubank Jr. did get hit a lot in that fight and wound up lumped up a bit. It was not as easy it looked for Eubank Jr., because he definitely got punished in that fight from the heavy hands of Chudinov. You can only imagine what Chudinov’s brother would have done to Eubank Jr. if he’d been in there with him, because Fedor is considered by a lot of boxing fans as the better of the Chudinov brothers.

Surprisingly, Murray is still ranked in the top 15 by the World Boxing Council at super middleweight despite having lost two out of his last three fights and three out of his last seven. Murray was beaten in his last fight by George Groves by a 12 round unanimous decision last June in London, UK. It was a fight that Murray basically gave away by him failing to throw punches.

Instead of letting his hands go, Murray hid behind his clam-shell guard and just covered up. It was hard for me to understand whether Murray was hiding behind the old clam-shell because he was afraid to get hit or if he simply didn’t have the stamina to fight hard for more than 20 seconds in every round. I think it was a combination of the two. When Murray would throw punches, he looked tired almost immediately.

I saw the same thing from Murray in his 11th round knockout loss to middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last year, and in his 12 round split decision defeat to Arthur Abraham last November. The fight was there to be won, but Murray would only throw a handful of punches before putting up the clam-shell guard to rest and hide from Abraham. That was a very, very winnable fight for Murray if he’d just thrown some punches. The same thing can be said about Murray’s fight against Groves. The fight was there to be won if Murray would have come out from hiding. Hiding behind his clam-shell guard wound up backfiring on Murray, because Groves hurt him by looping his shots around his high guard.

“I think it’s a tougher fight, if I’m honest with you,” Murray said to skysports.com about his fight against Chudinov. “He’s only had that one loss to Eubank Jr. He’s got a few wins, quite a lot by knockout, and he’s young, he’s fresh, and he’s ambitious. Obviously Arthur Abraham is old, experienced and he’s aged. It’s going to be a better fight for the fans, because all Abraham does is soak it up, then has a 10 second burst and wins the round. There is going to be more action in this fight.”

Well, I think Chudinov can hit almost as hard as Abraham, but he’s a heck of a lot busier. If Murray isn’t ready to actually fight on November 12th, we could see Chudinov wear him down and score a knockout. Murray is pretty good at covering up, but in this case, he’s going to get hit with a lot of shots if he all he does is cover up all night long. Murray might be able to block some of the incoming from Chudinov, but he won’t be able to block everything that gets thrown at him.

Murray says he would move back down to middleweight for a fight against someone like Chris Eubank Jr. At this point, it would seem unlikely that Eubank Jr. would bother fighting Murray, because there’s no real upside in him taking that fight. Murray has lost two out of his last three fights, as I mentioned. How does Eubank Jr. come out ahead in fighting a guy that is getting beaten 24/7 the way that Murray is>? Murray needs to stop losing all the time so that he can get guys like Eubank Jr. interested in fighting him.

If Murray loses to Chudinov, I don’t know what he’s going to do. That would be Murray’s third loss in his last four fights, and things would be looking bleak at that point. Yeah, Chudinov is now a light heavyweight, but he’s not one of the top guys in the division. It’s not like Murray is fighting Sergey Kovalev or Adonis Stevenson on November 12. If Chudinov whips Murray in a royal fashion, then it might be time for Murray to retire from boxing. I’m just saying.