By Sam Volz: Frank “The Ghost” Martin believes his fight with Artem Harutyunyan shouldn’t have been scored close by the judges because he felt he was up comfortably in his twelve round unanimous decision victory last Saturday night at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
The judges felt differently, scoring it 114-113, 115-112, and 115-112. Martin (18-0, 12 KOs) got the win just barely, but it wasn’t the kind of victory he needed to make a case for him to be deserving of a title shot against Devin Haney or Gervonta Davis.
Martin will eventually get a title shot because he’s now the secondary WBC mandatory behind Shakur Stevenson, so he could get a crack at the World Boxing Council title in one to two years.
Harutyunyan (12-1, 7 KOs) made Martin look bad in the first eight rounds, outboxing him and even out-slugging him as well. Martin turned things around after Harutyunyan grew fatigued starting in the ninth, and he took command of the fight against the tired fighter to dominate rounds 9-12.
In the 12th, Harutyunyan took a knee after taking a shot from Martin in his injured left eye. Harutyunyan went down in a delayed fashion after getting hit. He said afterward that the pain was too intense for him to stay on his feet.
Martin looked slow in his reaction time and a little musclebound during the entire fight. He was too robotic and heavily muscled for his own, and it worked against him. If Harutyunyan’s stamina was a little better and he hadn’t suffered the eye injury, he would have beaten Martin.
Martin says fight wasn’t close
“I think we just hit hard. You got some fighters that load up and land big shots, but I feel it’s a little more calculated on the punch placement on our end,” said Frank Martin to the media last Saturday night after his win over Artem Harutyunyan.
Said Martin about why fighters trained by Derrick James have been busting the eyes of their opponents recently. Martin was jabbing Harutyunyan in his left eye all night long and wasn’t hitting him with power shots in that area.
“Those big shots come when we’re doing certain things that we’re supposed to be doing,” said Martin. “There were some things that I was supposed to be doing that I wasn’t doing to get a stoppage tonight.
“I was really trying to adapt to his awkward style. The guy was a lot tougher than the people gave him his props for, or people were sleeping on the guy.
“He was an Olympian, and he had an awkward style. He had power, and the guys they fight don’t even got no power. So I’m not even worried about what they’re talking about.
“I don’t feel it was that close. I felt like I was sitting back a little too much, waiting a little too much. Derrick [James] is big on not leaving stuff in the judges’ hands,” said Martin.
The fight was close, and Martin will see that when he watches it back. If he chooses not to admit it to himself, it could prove to be difficult for him to improve. You must admit when you didn’t do enough to dominate your opponent.
Frank’s trainer urged him to press
“He told me I was down, and he was pressing the issue for me to pick it up, and I needed to get a stoppage,” said Martin. “So, I was looking for it, and that opening presented itself, but I did turn up and pressed the issue in those later rounds, and I needed to.”
It’s good that trainer Derrick James was able to recognize how dire Martin’s situation was late in the fight because he clearly didn’t. If not for James, Martin would have been content to keep fighting the way he’d been in the first eight rounds when he was getting schooled.
“When I was aggressive and moving forward, I was doing what I wanted to do,” said Martin. “It’s like, why wait for him to throw out his shots? You may be catching him, but he’s throwing punches.
“Don’t just be catching him. Go forward and shoot your shots because when you’re going forward, he’s backing up. Shoot your shots. I was on him,” said Martin about the twelfth round, where he had Harutyunyan under constant attack.
“My mind wasn’t completely open where I was like super calculated about shot placement. I felt like I got ahead of myself a little bit,” said Martin.
