Why is HBO so bias against Sergio Martinez ?

[Rantcatrat]

guess we'll see what happens if martinez ever fights a top fighter... cause from where i sit he's just not that good.

Just so we're clear, he beat Kelly Pavlik when he was the lineal middleweight champion, and he beat Paul Williams when he was top 5 p4p on most lists.

Who do you want to see him face?

haha

Exactly. Well said.

i see my post wasn't clear. there's no denying martinez has had a couple of spectacular wins (and a loss and a draw) against against a few of top level opponents a few years ago. what i meant to say was that i think he may be slipping based on his most recent performances. and we'll see how he fares in the future if and when he faces to level opposition again. because he's performed what i feel to be poorly against some basic b level fighters. which i feel lessens his credibility in the P4P rankings. sorry about the confusion on my part.

Ruthless, I get your point. I wasn't 100% clear either. I believe he comes on late in fights because a function of his style is that it takes him rounds to figure fighters out. He needs time to find openings. If Macklin had been his usual self, and bum-rushed Sergio, the fight may have been much shorter because he would have left himself open earlier in the fight. Boxers take longer to figure out. The downside of the style is that he leaves himself too little room for error. In the first Paul Williams fight, he didn't completely have Paul Williams figured out by the end of the fight, although I scored the fight for Martinez. As an aside, in the Kermit Cintron fight, he knocked Cintron out in the middle rounds because he had figured it out. It just wasn't called a knock out. If I follow you, you believe that this is more a function of slipping than a style thing. That's fair. We can agree to disagree. Who do you want to see Sergio fight or who at or around his weight class do you believe would be a higher level of opposition and provide a stern test?

the bold text that i have highlighted is the part that makes me believe that martinez is not that good and not deserving of that P4P status. its fair to say that any fighter would fair better if his opponents were more reckless and left themselves open to counter punching. the fact that macklin is a less than stellar fighter and was able to cause martinez trouble because he didn't just bum rush him demonstrates that martinez isn't the factor in his fights as much as his opponent's performance.

as for the williams rematch...that was a well timed lucky punch. he didn't land that because he planned to after, he landed it because williams wasn't even watching what he was doing. in martinez you see calculated genius. i see luck and perseverance. they say you gotta be good to be lucky---but luck does not equal P4P greatness.

as for who i want to see sergio fight... i don't care. the fact that he has little strong opposition at his chosen weight class isn't my concern. but the fact that he can clean out a division with no depth doesn't ensure his P4P status.

How can a well-timed punch be lucky? Sergio is a counter-puncher and he had him timed. NO doubt. There is NO debate there. Watch the highlights of the first fight on youtube. You'll see Sergio landing that punch multiple times.

Why do you consider Macklin pedestrian? I say Macklin gives any middleweight from top to bottom of the top ten a tough fight.

What did Sergio do wrong? Most people predicted a late-round KO and that's exactly what happened.

Sergio is the best of the crop at two weight classes meriting p4p ranking.

He's like Rodney Dangerfield - he can't get no respect.