This is not a tough call at all in my opinion. Martinez is a very athletic fighter, and has great skills, but he's not a thinking fighter, and B Hop would force him to waste a lot of energy by keeping his pace slow, while making Martinez use a lot of energy. B Hop would put counters in, and walk Martinez into traps. Martinez would probably win the first part of his fight with activity, although his real connect percentage would be very low. He would gas around mid fight, and B Hop would take over, and never give Martinez a chance to get back in the fight. I want to see Martinez vs Angulo. Against Angulo, he'll be forced to think because Angulo isn't going to gas, and he takes serious punishment, and has better technique IMO than Margarito.
Look at how Hopkins disected Pascal who is a bit similiar to Martinez in some respects, and this was at age 45. And to be honest, I'm impressed with Martinez, but he's no Roy Jones. And not to mention, I don't recall Roy ever gassing mid fight.
Martinez needs to prove he's not all athlete. I'm not saying his technique is bad, I think it's great in most cases, but he wastes too much energy. I want to see him with Angulo because before he knocked out Dziniziruk, mid fight against Pavlik and I believe against Williams, he started to gas. Angulo is going to take advantage of this and punish him. He needs to utilize a body attack against Angulo, and set him up. I mean, I give credit to Martinez because it seems like he always finds his second wind, but he has his opponent hurt when this happens. I've never seen Angulo even close to being hurt. The man is like a damn terminator robot. It's easy to dismiss Angulo, but history has shown that Martinez can be beat with pressure, even if he's improved all around as a fighter. And there is plenty of evidence that he uses too much energy and begins to tire. I think this would be a fan friendly fight and that HBO should set it up, if Angulo is up to it of course. Mayweather and Pac need to fight eachother before considering Martinez in my opinion.
Well, I really wouldn't say completely useless as for the common opponent. These are both favs, so I'm going to be honest with both. Remember, Hopkins schooled Pavlik not at 160, but at 170, where Kelly was the favorite even though he went up in weight. Sergio, on the other hand, fought Kelly in Kelly's domain of 160, so there wouldn't be any excuses because like Hatton never lost at 140, Kelly never lost at 160. And you know the rest of the story. The amount of time between these 2 fights was not very long either. Do you give Hopkins more credit for beating an undefeated Kelly at a higher weight, or do you give it to Sergio for beating Kelly where Kelly supposedly is strongest? Sergio has a style very, very similar to Roy Jones and is equally effective. That is why I am not so quick to pick Bhops despite his superior skills and size because he and Toney both had superior skills than RJ yet weren't successful against him. I think Bhops won one of the Taylor fights and I really don't think Taylor was a better fighter than Sergio.
im picking Hopkins by UD. Difficult style to beat. He's capable of ruining your fight strategy and he's very smart in the ring. i'm giving Maravilla 30% chance of winning.