Quote Originally Posted by Rantcatrat View Post
I'm also getting excited about this fight. I believe Darren Barker is being underrated in this fight. I still wonder if Barker really has the experience to face Martinez, but Barker will be the first true middleweight contender that Martinez has faced since Pavlik and he looks like a strong middleweight. Did anyone catch his fight with Conroy McIntosh? The fight isn't readily available on youtube although I read on boxrec that Barker was put down twice in that fight. It had me wondering that if Barker was put down by a journeyman scouser, he won't last with Martinez, but I'm not 100% on it.
It's hard not to think of Barker as anything but Martinez' next victim based on his lack of top opposition and/or lack of any experience at the world class level. Barker's resume is the who's who of fighters nobody has ever heard of outside the UK, so I don't agree that he's being underated.

Martinez is on a roll, he's been in with the best, and he has the power to put Barker's lights out. I'll say Barker survives a couple of knockdowns and makes it into one of the later rounds, before being brutally KTFO somewhere around the 8th or 9th round.