How does the Classic Forum rate Sergio Martinez ?

Seemed like he was very popular on most boxing boards when he was champion.

This board seemed to drag him about not fighting Golovkin around that time.

But he was a pretty popular champ in his day.

 

An excellent fighter by all accounts but probably not an ATG. Still he did amazing things for a man who came up very late in the sport.

 

I have never watched him fight, never read much about him and just know him as the handsome guy who ducked GGG because of a bad knee ? this is secondhand as I don’t even know what he looks like or have read about him beyond what’s here sometimes.

 

It was nice to see him eventually step out of the backwaters of mismanagement and non-recognition to gain the plaudits and popular respect that he did as a decent lineal champion having an Indian summer in the final third of his career, though he was probably no more than a good/ very good fighter by that point. I liked him a lot.

He sort of struck me as a physically weaker and less gifted/skilled version of Bomber Graham, but arguably with better focus and savvy than what Graham tended to sometimes display, albeit against fighters below the calibre of Kalambay and McCallum. Had a bit of that way to his movement of some of the older eclectic Argie fighters like Ahumada.

I never really rated the likes of Pavlik, Williams and Cintron, so it was good to see someone show what a genuinely very good fighter should be doing to that level of fighter. The ignominy of losing his title to Cotto of all people makes my eye twitch though, despite being quite funny in hindsight due to Cotto only getting a shot on name value to help an increasingly decrepit champion string out his stint at the front of the gravy train for as long as possible.

Hard to begrudge him at that point, mind, but I can't help feel that it partly lead to the delaying of Golovkin getting his arguably overdue crack of the whip(not that Golovkin and his team helped themselves especially) and a chance to show that he was the avoided, unbeatable monster that his fanbase have always pushed the idea of.

 

I don't get the impression that Martinez especially fancied the idea of facing Golovkin tbh @Vic-JofreBRASIL. Hindsight suggests it might have been a long, unpleasant night for him. Golovkin didn't exactly put himself in the mix though in fairness, spending too long titting about fighting mediocrity for the regular mickey mouse tin pot strap waiting for other ranked fighters to come to him. Similar to how McCallum didn't put himself in the frame at 160 for a crack at Hagler and then spent over 35 years moaning about being avoided.

 

Again, just what I heard most commonly - not what I believe or know.

 

Hiya mate. I don't disagree that Martinez ducked Golovkin as such. Like we've both said, Golovkin wasn't really in the frame due to poor management. I remember being appalled at the time how slowly a fighter of his long, accomplished amateur background was being brought along. Like Tszyu, Lomachenko, Arbachakov etc, he was more or less the finished article within his own limitations when he turned pro other than the longer distance thing.

It's grand to see you back by the way, I've spent years telling folk what a good poster you were back in the day haha.

 

I think that he was kind of lucky with his timing, getting Pavlik when he was ready to be taken.

I disagree about him not being contemporary with Golovkin.

Towards the end of his title reign, the consensus seemed to be that he was the champion, but Golovkin was the best middleweight in the world.

 

I mostly agree mate.

 

Purely on watching Golovkin from a technical and physical stance I'd agree. He looked like the better fighter at that point in time despite being less accomplished than Martinez as a pro but hadn't done enough to prove it quickly enough and force Martinez's hand. Like I said earlier, he was already more or less at his peak shortly after turning pro and should have been fast-tracked effectively like Lomachenko rather than lurking in the background with his team expecting everyone else to come to him based on his amateur record. He'd probably have been ready for a couple of years to beat Pavlik around the time that Martinez did from an ability point of view, but it doesn't work like that.