Darren Barker is shite. Martinez is going to rip his head off.

He doesn't incur any ailments.

Thats kind of the point.

He doesn't get his nose bloodied by the Darren Barkers of this world.

Hell, he doesn't even FIGHT the Darren Barkers of this world.

 

By Jason Gonzalez



With a professional record of 47-2-2 (26), it’s only fair that Argentine Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez be mentioned in the same category alongside other elite fighters such as Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. However, although Martinez may have rightfully earned his current pound-for-pound status by relieving Kelly Pavlik of the linear middleweight championship and disposing Paul Williams in two rounds, he still fights in relative obscurity. So when will he get his just due? Only time will tell.

In an attempt to remain active, as well as to make a sales pitch to the other fighters north and south of the middleweight division, Martinez will challenge heavy underdog “Dazzling” Darren Barker of London, England. Barker brings a record of 23-0 (14) with him to the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Not bad. However, the question that lingers is, who exactly did Barker fight to get this opportunity? The answer: a bunch of journeymen, all but one in the United Kingdom (the other being in Canada), and 10 of the 23 opponents had losing records. In fact, when Barker was 14-0, he faced an opponent that was 2-3. How does one get up for a fight with an opponent with a padded résumé?


“I take it very seriously just like every other fight that I have had in the past,” said Martinez. “Make no mistake about it; Darren Barker isn’t coming to lay down. He is coming to win just like me. That’s more than enough motivation for me to prepare and fight well.”

Martinez makes some valid points and although there is some credence to what he is saying, there aren’t many anticipating a “shock-the-world” upset on the first of October. It’s just that the pedigree of Martinez and his level of competition makes Barker look like a much lesser class of prizefighter which in turn, makes this contest seem like a laughable mismatch.

“Look, it is evident that Barker has a lot more to win than I do. A bad outing here and I am written off and forgotten about,” said Martinez. “I have everything to lose and I can’t afford that. In order to get the big fights, it is important that I win and look good doing so. It is also important for me to win so that I can maintain the level that I am at.”

Exactly how long can the 36-year-old southpaw continue to show the mastery of dominating such foes? How much longer will fans have to wait before Martinez is in the squared circle facing worthy adversaries? Frustration has to resonate with the champion.

**************************

:laugh11: :laughing: :: :atu:

 

Ive been to one of his fights. it happened in los angeles, and his eye almost fell out of the socket.

 

Your boss, Saad, told me that you've ingested your fair share of apple-juice in your time,.. he now owns shares in online auction businesses, aswell as your James Toney dvd.

ps:- There's a housing bubble crisis,.. this might be your only chance.

 

No, he was stopped on cuts by pfp #24 Lennox Lewis.

 

his eye appeared to be ailing him

 

Looks like Sergio had a mediocre performance, he is clearly shit and the rest of his career is invalidated.

 

I don't get, Martinez, who i think is slightly overrated but still a quality fighter, gets a lot of heat for a bad performance against a guy that was far better than expected. Plus the guy is 36, it may also be that time is starting to catch up with him

 

Spurt fightin' Sergio is a good, solid fighter with one very high quality win (Williams II)...Pavlik was honestly washed up by the time that fight happened.

Over the last year, Martinez has been the most overrated fighter in the sport by far. He's pretty clearly a top 5 p4p guy, but some rate him as high as #1. ::

If you think/thought he's even CLOSE to as good as Pacquiao/Mayweather/Donaire, you simply don't know anything about boxing.

 

martinez is still the best fighter on the planet, although he looked shitty tonight. there is no one at 160 or below who can fuck with him. for the record, the first williams fight was a quality win as well as the pavlik fight, the cintron fight, the dzinzurik fight

 

If Martinez was a legend, this would be seen as a typical routine performance, where he struggled more than expected against a relatively unknown, technically sound and hungry challenger (Louis-Farr, Holmes-Williams, whoever)

Now that he is an active fighter, he sucks and this goes to prove that boxing is in ruins

 

Yeah, this forum has almost been relegated to
gag status with all of the childish, knee jerk pessimism and prickish elitism.

 

I mean seriously, it's hard to take people as anything more than a joke when people are literally delirious about a professional boxer being punched in he nose by another
professional boxer and bleeding.

 

Anyone who thinks that Sergio Martinez is a great fighter is retarded and/or very easily impressed

Yes, boxing right now is not as good as it was, I don't know how anyone can't see that.

How many of these leap amateurs have to find their way into "elite" status before it occurs to any of you that there may be a problem?

A guy with Martinez's "style" would have been picked off long ago if there were enough guys out there in the talent pool who knew how to jab, parry, slip, counter... you know BOX

 

It was a pretty shitty fight. Barker is piss and martinez struggled with him.

I wasn't especially impressed with martinez tho. You should be taking out a guy like Barker in much better fashion, without any difficulties.

 

My last post was not directed at you. I do give you credit for being continuous with your opinion of Martinez.

However

I do not see 'leap amateurs' nearly as bad and negative thing as you and Hut. Yes, it may be ruining boxing in the sense that he have grown to think about the sport: the techniques reduce to one-twos, slipping and blocking is replaced by keeping distance, inside fighting becomes useless as the other guy holds on and leans. And so on.

But, this leap amateur style of boxing is very difficult to beat under the rules of boxing. A guy with Khan's speed, movement, reach and unwillingness to exchange would be a formidable challenge to most of past legends who knew every move in the book. In boxing you don't have to be better than your opponent: it is enough if you have one edge and you are able to make that count. For many fighters now, that edge is quick movement, which allows to them to reduce exchange situations and steal points by landing pitty-pat shots.

So perhaps what we are seeing here is not necessarily a complete loss of class but instead a change in tactics of the sport. Just like a guy with Muhammad Ali's style was not supposed to be successful: he still shouldn't according to orthodox boxing knowledge (not comparing anybody to Ali of course)

Furthermore: yes it was basic boxing that troubled Martinez here. But hasn't high guard, defensive style, reach advantage and fairly quick hands always been the recipe to make the other guy look bad? Martinez is a counter puncher by nature: he is not at his best in a situation where the other guy stays out and throws quick straight shots.

Carl Williams had nothing but strength and a good jab: with these assets he gave Larry Holmes all he could handle, and Holmes was a technical master. Ken Norton had good basic technique, but he was not particularly fast nor a murderous puncher. Yet his steady pressure and jabbing was almost too much for Ali to handle. And so on. Unflashy basic boxing has often been the key to victories and good performances.

So, I am not saying that you were wrong about your views, I just don't see the changes in boxing all that dramatic and negative.

 

Good post.

 

Talk about a knee-jerk reaction...

nobody is delirious about that

what they are noticing (and what you seem unable to notice) is that Barker, a guy with very little discernible talent or real skill, essentially frustrated a guy some people have as one of the three best fighters on Earth by doing little more than keeping his hands up and throwing a range-finder jab... Martinez essentially won the fight because he is faster and nothing more... I don't know why you can't see the ill effects modern amateur boxing is having on the pro game, I really don't... I don't know why it hasn't occured to you that in basically any other era, Bernard Hopkins would be retired now and that he is essentially still a big factor because he fights the way pro fighters fought for the last 70 years... and he doesn't even do it that impressively anymore, he's an old man, he basically does it in little spurts and the young guys, trained on the jump/flurry system, don't know how to deal with what he's doing because they have no frame of reference for it.

Watch George Benton in the RIP thread... What's he doing there? He doesn't leap in with shots, doesn't jump straight back from punches... everything is cool and measured... the footwork is subtle, the movement only that which is necessary... notice the shoulder roll (there's a great fighter out there right now who uses the same tactic, some guy named Mayweather) and notice how he punches... shots are not accompanied by a Naseem Hamed jump, nor are they single haymakers followed by a clinch... he punches in rhythm, when the opponent throws a hook he gives him a shoulder to hit and in the same motion places a left hook counter right on the money. That's boxing.

Outside of Older fighters (Mayweather, Marquez, Hopkins when he's not busy using every trick in the book to slow the pace to a crawl) when's the last time you saw a guy north of the Featherweight division who slips punches? When have you seen a guy who reacts to aggression calmly with a few careful diagonal steps right or left before firing back a jab or a quick counter? This used to be commonplace...

Furthermore, when is the last time you saw a really skillful pressure fighter, not named Pacquiao, north of featherweight? what guy fighting right now cuts off the ring really well while slipping shots and double hooking? Again, used to be lots of guys like that in every division... I think your viewpoint is based entirely on a hatred of anybody you perceive as "old" and you simply write off any observations, no matter how clearly valid, as "Bert Sugar" or some shit like that... the reactionary here isn't me, it's YOU... I don't hear you make any real observations about what is really going on in the ring... your observations are only of perceptions you have of anybody who thinks that someone who fought before 2000 was really good... there's no debate of the facts, just "you are Bert Sugar" ... yeah, and I'M a waste of time?

 

Nah...watch the fight. He seemed clueless at times.

 

Baker

 

A pfp #3 guy doesn't stand in front of his man with a bleeding nose, his hands down, and a thick look on his face trying to figure out the Spinx-esque riddle that is a guy with a desultory jab and a pair of high-hands. When the man in question is Darren Baker-Barker, a fighter whose name the MC can't even be bothered to get correct, then you really do have to reassess Martinez.

 

Mayweather would have a field day against martinez.

 

Fair play to Barker. He did better than i predicted he'd do, but he's still shit and martinez is overrated.

 

I respect your reasoned and measured response, UGO

But where I disagree is that fighters like Ali, Jones, to a lesser extent Naseem Hamed were always the EXCEPTION, not the rule... They got away with what they did because of a preposterous level of physical talent... But even they had their limitations and those limitations were shown up... In Ali's case, he overcame them by being obscenely tough and courageous once his legs and his speed had diminished in the 1970s... Jones managed to thrive because although he did everything "wrong", there was a definite method to the madness, what killed him off was losing his speed, because it HAD to be there for his style to work... Hamed was exposed wholesale by a committed, unintimidated guy who simply used classic boxing skill to undress him... I submit, for Ali's absolute prime, his fight with Zora Folley... Folley wasn't blessed with great physical talent and was pretty well sued up by the time he got a title shot, but he really frustrated Ali for stretches of that fight, and landed more right hands in one fight than all of Ali's previous opponents combined... he did it because he had EXCEPTIONAL skills and the confidence to use them... in the end, his chin let him down, but Ali had tremendous difficulty figuring him out... Mike McCallum was a washed-up old man when he fought Roy Jones but with little more than technical know-how, he made him look outright bad for significant stretches of their fight, he simply didn't have enough physical ability left to capitalize...

Now, there are dozens of guys who fight (or attempt to anyway) in the Jones mold but they don't have his freakish talent... I think one of the biggest reasons we see so many of them at the world level now is because there aren't any well-schooled technical guys for them to run into on the way up... Again, I submit the utterly absurd success of the nearly 50 Bernard Hopkins... I saw in the grocery store the other day, a "RING" Magazine with his picture on the cover with the sub-heading "TIME BANDIT!" , the idea ostensibly being that Bernard is doing something of incredible historic significance by continuing to be competitive with guys 20 years younger than him... What do these guys all have in common? Styles based largely around the modern AM game... If Bernard met a young man with all of the physical advantages associated with being a young man, but that young man was reasonably well schooled, Bernard would be getting beat up... And it wouldn't have to be a great light heavyweight, it needn't be Spinks or Foster or Ezzard Charles... take someone like Virgil Hill, steady and unspectacular... basically a guy with a good feet and a persistent jab and a fair right hand... I think if you took Virgil Hill, circa 1993 or whatever and put him in there with Hopkins, he's winning 10 rounds to 2 at worst...

There have always been unorthodox fighters, some have been successful, many haven't been... there were always fighters who picked off guys like that on the way up... Separated the pretenders from the rest... Where are those guys now?

Where are the Harold Brazier types? Saoul Mamby types? Who is the Gaspar Ortega of today? Who's the current eras Freddie Pendleton or Ralph Dupas?? Where are the Gregorio Peraltas? The game is missing these types of fighters... highly skilled, tough, seasoned guys who expose those whose unorthodoxy is not matched by physical ability, they cull the weak... there aren't any guys like that anymore because there aren't enough good fighters... you can get by now doing a Jones-ish impersonation without having anywhere near his talent or intelligence... I stand by it: Ali, Jones... they were EXCEPTIONS, fighters so stunningly gifted that they could do everythng wrong and have it come out mostly right... the exception has become the rule

 

It's hard to say if he could take all that wieght on his body, but I am of the opinion that if Mayweather could reasonably carry the extra poundage, he would absolutely school Martinez

 

He beats him, in my opinion. Martinez isn't that tall, and we already know that Floyd can deal with "functional" weight disadvantages, as evidenced by his DEMOLITION job on the HUGE Victoria Ortiz.

Here is the rub....Floyd is going to see that hand-speed, those 1 punch stoppages, the multiple knock-downs of Dzindzuruk...and he'll decide he doesn't really want any part of him, especially when he can indulge himself with fat paydays versus the likes of Ortiz or Marquez.

 

155 would be all Floyd needs. Then keep his hands up, stick out the jab, and let the flummoxing begin.

 

get real, martinez would beat the shit out of mayweather jr.

 

yeah, I am sure his leaping left hand would be impossible to defense:34:

 

no way in hell mayweather jr would even consider the fight. but seriously he would get thrashed by martinez. a southpaw, who is awkward and (usually) hard to hit. yet has good handspeed and is able to knock out middleweights with one shot.

you speak as though martinez doesnt land his left hand flush against every opponent he's faced, multiple times per round.