(Photos Courtesy HBO/Will Hart) By Peter Wells: It has been 11 long years, and many, many wins and titles since Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez fought in the country that raised him. That night Francisco Antonio Mora was the opponent and no one in the same building as Sergio would have had the slightest clue of what greatness Martinez would achieve in the that time before returning to his homeland. He left Argentina an unknown novice and he returns a national hero. Martinez’s status is so large in Argentina he is now even bigger in his homeland than football superstar Lionel Messi.
So who better to take on the daunting task than the un-nerved and quietly confident Englishman, Martin Murray. Murray is relishing the opportunity and joins a trio of Englishmen to face the Middleweights best. Murray hopes though that he will not suffer the same fate as his fellow countrymen (Darren Barker was stopped in the 11th and Matthew Macklin was pulled out at the end of the 11th). Murray is a huge, and I mean HUGE underdog going into tomorrow night, but the odds didn’t favour him much better when he set foot in Felix Sturm’s homeland of Germany in December 2011.