Is Sergio Martinez An All-Time Great?
Sergio Martinez looked magnificent recently while successfully defending his middleweight crown against the recognized number two contender in the world, Matthew Macklin. Macklin had his moments, but when the going got tough, Martinez upped his game significantly and got his feisty challenger from across the pond out of there near the end of the 11th round. It goes into the record book officially as a twelfth round TKO. Macklin’s lead trainer Buddy McGirt, wisely stopped the fight, telling the referee that Macklin could no longer continue.
Macklin, like all fighters, still wanted to continue but trusted his corner and their decision on his behalf. He was bleeding heavily from multiple cuts and had absorbed a lot of punishment over the latter half of the fight. The decision by McGirt, a former world champion, was indeed the correct call.
Martinez’s record now stands at W49, KO28, L2, D2. Macklin now falls back to W28, KO19, L4, D0. The records of both men are great enough to make most fighters envious. Martinez’s win over Macklin raises another important question. Namely, just how great is Martinez and, is he an all-time great? This would require an intimate look at his career record and the quality of his opponents. By the way, just for the sake of edification, an all-time great boxer is a fighter that would be world champion in every era of boxing history. Using that as our sole criteria, the list of true all-time great middleweight champions is not as long as most people would think.
An all-time great middleweight champion, or champion from any weight division for that matter, is a fighter who cleans out his division while holding onto the title belt for a significantly long period of time. A great fighter may be champion for a year or two. An all-time great would be the king of the hill for a much longer time period.
In his last 36 professional fights, Martinez has 34 wins with one loss and one draw. However the loss and the draw were both bogus decisions that should have been wins for Maranvilla if not for inept refereeing and crooked judging. The draw occurred when he faced and thrashed Kermit Cintron. On February 14th, 2009 in Florida, Martinez actually dropped Citron for a ten count only to have Cintron rise, complain to referee Frank Santore Jr. that he was just confused and not hurt. Santore Jr., unbelievably bought Cintron’s b.s. story and allowed the fight to continue. That fight was a travesty and embarrassment to boxing. Yet, Martinez refused to complain or blame anyone for his misfortune. He accepted it in stride and moved on, which is the mark of a true champion.
Of course, immediately after that fight, both men’s careers went in decidedly different directions. Martinez rose to become the best middleweight boxer in the world while Cintron’s career went into the dumper and, most recently, ended after an emphatic knockout loss to rising star Saul Alvarez.
On December fifth of the same year came an even worse decision in a fight against Paul Williams at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic. Now we know that Williams management had bribed judges and officials in New Jersey to always score fights on his behalf regardless of what actually took place in the ring. That night, Martinez gave Williams a terrific beating only to be on the losing end of a majority decision in favor of Paul Williams.
To his eternal credit, Martinez showed that he is indeed a breed apart from other world champions by not complaining publicly about getting screwed for the second fight in a row. He simply shrugged his shoulders, smiled and moved on, which endeared him to fights fans around the world forever.
So, to set the record straight for posterity, since his knockout loss to Antonio Margarito on February 19th, 2000, Martinez has really gone 38 and 0, which is a record only Floyd Mayweather Jr. can match. This is ironic because Martinez wants to fight Mayweather Jr. somewhere down the line, sooner rather than later. If Mayweather Jr. does not ever end up fighting Pacquiao (and the odds are he never will) then it is very unlikely he would agree to face Maranvilla, a fighter with a quirky style, tremendous speed and power, great footwork and a granite chin. Why does facing Mayweather Jr. matter so much to Martinez? Money! He stands to make somewhere in the area of $25-$30 million dollars for such a fight. Much like the Pacquio fight, a Mayweather-Martinez fight will also never happen.
So, is Martinez among the best ever middleweight champions the division has ever seen? I think so. The middleweight division has long been boxing’s most popular weight class. This is primarily because most people are closer to being middleweights than heavyweights.
Without a doubt, the middleweight division has given boxing some of its greatest and most colorful fighters ever. There have been some middleweight champs, such as Mickey Walker and Harry Greb, who fought and defeated some of the top ranked heavyweight fighters on a regular basis. Mickey Walker fought and lost to Max Schmeling but not before he held future champ Jack Sharkey to a draw.
Harry Greb, the famed “Pittsburgh Windmill” gave future heavyweight champ Gene Tunney a horrific beating, which turned out to be the sole defeat of Tunney’s stellar career. Greb fought his whole career while blind in his left eye and was still the most avoided fighter in the sport during his time.
Harry Greb ranks as an all-time great middleweight champion in everyone’s books. That is to say, you can put him in any era of boxing history and he would still be the best middleweight in the world. Today’s fans often tend to forget some of the great middleweight champs of the past. This is sad, when you consider that the 160 lb. class has given us some of boxing’s most exciting fighters, such as Tony Zale, Marcel Cerdan, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson, Gene Fullmer and Carmen Basilio. Their collective ring accomplishments are still discussed today whenever boxing historians get together.
Boxing titles change hands often these days, making it very difficult for any champion to gain universal recognition as the best fighter in his weight class. From 1970 on, however, the general consensus among boxing experts is that there have been four superior middleweight world champions who have been in a class of their own. They rank in order of succession, Carlos Monzon, Marvin Hagler, Bernard Hopkins and now, Sergio Martinez. There can be absolutely no doubt Martinez is proving with each fight that he is in the prime of a great career and Hall of Fame title reign.
The interesting thing about Martinez is that he considers himself a true junior-middleweight rather than a full-fledged middleweight. He fights at 160 lbs rather than 154 lbs because there is more money and prestige attached to the middleweight division. In fact, he often enters the ring closer to the junior middleweight limit of 154 lbs. rather than at the top end of the middleweight limit, which is 160lbs.
Sergio Martinez looked superb in his recent victory at Madison Square Gardens in New York, on St. Patrick’s Day. Martinez was facing British born Irishman Matthew Macklin, the number two-ranked middleweight in the world. Macklin looked good in the early part of the fight. Trained by Buddy McGirt, Macklin followed McGirt’s plan of head movement and moving side to side very well. Macklin’s head movement made it very difficult for Martinez to find a home for his left hook in the early going.
The problem with game plans are that they do not take into consideration the possibility that your opponent will alter his game, thus rendering your original plan useless. As the fight wore on, Martinez became more effective and gradually figured Macklin out. One of the keys to greatness for any fighter is the ability to improvise on the spot and Martinez is the best fighter in the world today when it comes to ad-libbing in the ring.
Another point to take into consideration is that Martinez is a southpaw and no one likes to fight southpaws. Even southpaws hate fighting southpaws. The age-old wisdom when facing a southpaw is to circle away from his power hand, which would be his left.
Macklin do so effectively in the beginning but then Martinez made the necessary adjustments, leaving Macklin confused and off-balance in the ring later on in the match.
Macklin landed some good hard shots on Martinez early in the bout. Martinez took his time figuring out his foe, while not being bothered by the challenger’s punches. Macklin deserves credit for giving the champ a good fight. Macklin landed his share of power shots, although Martinez’s granite chin stood him in good stead throughout the match. Macklin was coming off a highly disputed loss against Felix Sturm in Germany.
As the fight progressed, Martinez gave Macklin many different angles to look at in every round. Macklin rarely saw the same stance or style twice in any round from Martinez. This made it supremely hard for Macklin to adjust his style to counter Martinez. Martinez’s continual foot movement just did not allow Macklin enough time to set himself properly in order to fire back any telling combinations at the champion.
As the fight wore on, Macklin was reduced to leaping in and throwing two or three punches at a time, while leaving himself very exposed and susceptible to hard counter left hands, which Martinez threw and landed almost unerringly for the latter half of the match.
The seventh round was the turning point in the fight. Macklin got a gift from the referee after he tripped Martinez and it was ruled an official knockdown. The faux knockdown gave Macklin a small and temporary points lead in the fight. It was also the last round he won in the fight. The end was nigh.
Martinez finally figured Macklin by the eighth round, and started to turn his Irish foe, confusing the younger fighter and muting his attack. Martinez simply could not miss with his left hand all night long. He began to whack Macklin with hard left power shots repeatedly. Martinez would then slide to his left, turning Macklin, and then whack him again with more left hands. Macklin was simply unable to block Martinez’s left hands. In the end, it cost him the fight.
For some reason, it never occurred to Macklin to move away from southpaw Martinez’s left hand, and go the opposite direction, rather than walk towards it, into the champ’s power alley, like a moth to light.
From the eighth round on Martinez piled up the points and rounds until he dropped Macklin near the end of the 11th round with a stiff, hard, short left hand. Macklin arose groggily and Martinez turned him one last time and then landed his best punch of the night, a vicious left hook high on Macklin’s cheek which dropped the Irishman for the second time. Macklin rose on unsteady legs, bleeding from cuts on his forehead and over his left eye. He beat the count as the round ended but his trainer Buddy McGirt wisely ended the fight.
It goes into the books as 12th round knockout victory for Sergio Martinez, the universally recognized middleweight champion of the world. All great middleweight champions have had tough fights in which they needed to use every ounce of skill and energy they possessed to pull out a win. Martinez did just that against Macklin, a very good fighter in his own right.
Martinez’s title defenses recently have followed a similar pattern. The challenger comes out and gives Martinez a bit of trouble early in the fight. Martinez then figures them out and wears them down meticulously until the very last rounds, when he decides he has had enough and knocks his challenger out. To be able to score knockouts near the end of such tough and brutal fights against the best fighters in the world only serves to underscore the championship heart, talent, courage and determination of Sergio Martinez. Not only is he the universally recognized world middleweight champion, he may very well be the best boxer in the world right now pound for pound. When he retires, he will enter the Hall of Fame in Canastota unanimously on the very first ballot. To accomplish that, you have to be, beyond a shadow of a doubt, an all-time great.
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