Sergio Gabriel Martínez vs. Jhon Jairo Teherán Martínez

Mañana en el Estadio Luna Park de Buenos Aires. Diez asaltos de boxeo programadas en la división de peso mediano.

(Tomorrow at Luna Park Stadium in Buenos Aires. Ten rounds of fighting scheduled in the middleweight division.)

This marks the sixth leg of SGM's comeback tour, after the former WBC middleweight champion of the world retired in 2015 with a knee injury. He returned in 2020 and has gone 5-0 since, but against middling opposition (the best being Britain's basic Brummie battler, Brian Rose). He is still world ranked and on a crusade - a quixotic one, putting it politely - to regain a title belt despite now pushing 50.

Teherán is himself no spring chicken at 38 years old, but has an entire decade of youth on the man once known as "Sexy Sergio", who turned 48 last month. Teherán hails from Colombia, boasting what has come to be the country's stereotypical "glass cannon" record, with most of his victories (all domestic) and both of his defeats coming via KO.

 

...alright then, who's going to begin to sing it first...

 

Just counted and yes, same # of syllables as John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidtt.

 

You are correct! Down at welterweight, where the young soccer & cycling crossover (and thus late blooming boxer) Maravilla never belonged. After moving to Spain a couple of years on and moving up to 154, he completed his transformation into a world class fighter, with his later success and the specter of that loss being a huge part of why the "Margarito the Boogeyman that could topple Floyd" hype became the avalanche that it did.

 

I'm pretty sure this whole thing was just slapped together in the last week. The show, an Óscar Bonavena tribute, may have already been in place but I don't think Martínez was added onto the card until very recently. I remember looking at his BoxRec page and poring over the Spanish boxing side of Twitter for news about him after Golovkin vacated his WBA belt (on March 9th) and there was nothing in the works. He was likely hoping for a bigger fight in the first half of 2023, with the holy grail being a "ye gods, why couldn't they have met up a decade ago?!" erstwhile dream match with GGG - now all but dashed.

If he's lucky - we're not, because that'll be Martínez vs. Erislandy Lara for the strap and for a whole mess of reasons that isn't something I'd like to see.

 

I know. I never bought it myself (too slow and defensively open).

But that mightn't have been a conversation had in those days (before his WBO reign) by anything but diehards if Margo didn't have that marquee victory that kept looking better and better as the years went on.

 

Doing what, fighting more or less the same caliber opponent as his last five? Were you not even aware of his comeback which has been going on nearly as long as Covid?

He's been quite vocal about his endgame here being another title shot.

 

Confusing as this might be, they don't actually have the same last name, at least not in an apples-to-apples way that would be parallel to most Americans having the same surname.

Put simply, in most of Latin America you get two family names, an apellido paterno from your father and an apellido materna from your mother. Mexico goes probably the craziest, with between one and three personal names (the first one being the given name they mainly go by, except among close friends and family who may give them a nickname, and their second or third personal name if they're Catholic being a Baptism name taken from a saint) and then both parents' family names for a total of up to five. If you were to shorten a Mexican's five names down to just two you'd use the given name (which is typically going to appear first on a birth certificate) and the father's family name, or apellido paterno (which appears second-to-last on a birth certificate).

The laws in Argentina work a bit differently from elsewhere. You can have maximum three names, or minimum two. For the three, it can be two personal names and one surname; it can be first, middle, last; or it can be a given name and then both parents' family names - but for government bureaucratic purposes you just can't exceed three. That means Maravilla's full & complete name is indeed Sergio Gabriel Martínez, with Gabriel as his middle name - there isn't any part missing from that. Now, if Argentina worked like most of the rest of Latin America he would be Sergio Gabriel Martínez Griselda, since his mother's name is Susana Griselda (or if they hadn't given him a middle name he'd be Sergio Martínez Griselda...or if his mom raised him and dad was a deadbeat perhaps even Sergio Gabriel Griselda). So the part of his name that lined up with Jhon Jairo Teherán Martínez's would be the Griselda, not the Martínez.

Their paternal last names (Teherán and Martínez) are different, so this isn't analogous to a Tom Smith fighting a Carl Smith.

 

Four bout card starts at 22:00 local time in Buenos Aires (9pm EST) on ESPN Knockout ...but since it's a Bonavena tribute who knows how much filler they will throw in. Not uncommon for Argentine main event ring walks to extend well past midnight local time, as I anticipate this could.

 

Laureano "Diamante" Ubiedo Sciuto vs. Héctor Andrés "Maquinita" Sosa in the featherweight co-main event.

(see, both Argies so both are three-namers )