Martin Murray wants to brawl with Gabriel Rosado

Boxingnews24.com

By Scott Gilfoid: 4-time world title challenger Martin Murray (34-4-1, 16 KOs) says he’s going to war in his fight against middleweight Gabriel Rosado (23-10, 13 KOs) in their fight on April 22 at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. Murray believes that he still has a chance to win a world title at 160 when current IBF/IBO/WBC/WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin moves up to super middleweight. Golovkin is expected to move up to 168 after the end of the year, according to his trainer Abel Sanchez.

Golovkin moving up will open up his 4 titles in his possession. The 34-year-old Murray wants to snatch one of them. However, for Murray o do that, he’s going to need to beat Rosado, who is a tough option for anyone in the middleweight division, especially someone who is coming down in weight like Murray is from the super middleweight division.

“I know that I still have a World title in me,” said Murray to fightnews.com. ”I’m flying in the gym and I believe I am a level above him and it will tell on the night,” said Murray about Rosado.

Murray is going to need to keep from covering up like a sparring partner against Rosado if he wants to win the fight. That’s the whole problem with Murray. He covers up behind his guard for long periods of time, and he lets his opponents tee off on him. The judges obviously see this from Murray, and they give the rounds to his opposition. But covering up against a puncher like Rosado would be dangerous for Murray, because he’s a got good power with either hand. I give the 34-year-old Murray a chance to beat Rosado if he fights him hard for 3 minutes of every round, throws a lot of punches, and doesn’t cover up behind his guard the way he normally does.

I would give Murray more of a chance of beating Rosado if he had some punching power that would worry the 31-year-old, but that’s just not the reality. Rosado tends to have problems against guys with either huge power or good hand speed. The last time I checked, Murray has neither of those qualities to his game. Murray isn’t a big puncher, and never will be. He’s certainly not fast of hand or foot. But perhaps the worst thing that Murray has going for him in this fight – or any fight for that matter – is his low volume punch rate. Murray doesn’t throw enough punches to beat the better fighters. Murray could have beaten Sergio Martinez, Arthur Abraham, George Groves and Felix Sturm. Those were all winnable fights for Murray if he’d just thrown more punches instead of standing around and hiding behind his high guard. When the fights were on the line, Murray chose to hide behind his clam-shell guard rather than going on the attack and 80-100 punches per round like he needed to do. I would say that Murray only needed to average 30-50 punches thrown per round to beat those guys, but due to his lack of punching power, I think he would have still needed to throw a massive amount of punches to get the victory in each of those fights. The thing is a fighter like Murray can win if he throws a ton of punches each round.

As long as the judges see Murray throwing shots, he has a chance of winning. Heck, Murray might have even knocked Groves out if he had let his hands go, because he looked bothered and unsure of himself when he was under a brief attack from Murray late in the fight. Instead of continuing to bombard Groves, Murray went back to hiding behind his clam-shell guard for the remainder of the fight and wound up losing a 12 round unanimous decision in their fight last June.

“Against Groves, I was far from my best but I left it all in the ring and nearly spun it on its head late on and that was me at only 60 per cent,” said Murray.

I saw the Murray vs. Groves fight, and I didn’t see any point where Martin almost won. I did see Murray get hurt late in the fight when he was nailed by a big right hand from Groves while he was covering up lie a sparring partner. Groves was ready for Murray’s high guard, as he was aiming many of his punches around the sides of his guard rather than straight up the middle like many of his opponents tend to do.

Golovkin created the blueprint in how to beat Murray in their fight in 2015 when focused on throwing wide hooks that made it around Murray’s high guard. Murray ended up getting knocked out in the 11h round when he backed up against the ropes and covered up while Golovkin wailed away at him with big power shots one after another. The referee finally had to step in and stop the fight when he saw that Murray wasn’t going to throw anything back. I don’t know how hurt Murray was. It just looked like Murray was doing his usual routine of covering up behind his high guard, and the referee halted it after he saw that Golovkin was nailing him with a massive amount of punches. If Murray had thrown anything back, I think the fight would have continued. That’s the thing about Murray. He’ll hide behind his guard without throwing punches for long stretches of time. If he does that against Rosado, he might get taken out in the same way. Rosado is capable of throwing sustained flurries when he’s got a guy covering up on him. It might only take 15-20 consecutive punches from Rosado to get the referee to step in and stop the fight if Murray doesn’t at least throw one punch back.

Rosado will be a very tough fight for Murray just based on him being a natural middleweight, and the bigger puncher of the two. But with Murray having to drop down in weight from super middleweight, it’s going to be tough on him. Rosado is the younger guy with less mileage on him. Rosado lost to Golovkin in the past in a 7th round TKO defeat in 2013, but he didn’t take as much punishment as Murray did because he was using a lot of movement in the fight.

If Murray beats Rosado, I still don’t see him winning one of the middleweight world titles. Murray would have to beat someone like Jermall Charlo or Daniel Jacobs for him to win one of the 160 lb. titles. If Murray can get lucky and get a fight against Saul Canelo Alvarez, it probably won’t matter if he loses the fight. The money a fight like that would bring Murray would be like winning a title. It would be a big payday if Murray could fight Canelo for one of Golovkin’s titles. I don’t think the chances of Murray getting a crack at Canelo are good though, but you never know. I don’t think Canelo will be in any kind of a rush to fight Jacobs or Charlo after Golovkin moves up weight. Those are dangerous guys. Murray would be the better option for Canelo if he can beat Rosado and get ranked high enough to go after one of the middleweight titles.