#4 WBO, #8 IBF Vanes Martirosyan (35-1-1, 21 KOs) is hoping to get a fight against former WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in the near future following Martirosyan’s 10 round unanimous decision win over contender Willie Nelson last Saturday night on Showtime from the Foxwoods Resort, in Mashantucket, Connecticut, USA.
Martirosyan, 28, wore Nelson down and punished him with hard shots in the 2nd half of the fight. It was a tough fight for Martirosyan because he took a lot of hard shots, and he ended up with a badly bruised face in winning by the scores of 97-93, 97-93 and 96-94.
“Trout, Lara, Canelo”, Martirosyan said Thaboxingvoice.com in talking about who he wants to fight. “We don’t want to take a step back. We want to go forward.”
Canelo would be a good opponent for Martirosyan to fight, but that’s not a realistic option right now. Canelo will probably be facing WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto next May, and after that he’ll likely be looking for other big names such as Gennady Golovkin and possibly a rematch against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Martirosyan’s best shot at getting a fight against Canelo would be in 2016 if Canelo doesn’t move up in weight to middleweight.
Even then, it’s quite possible Canelo would give Martirosyan a fight if he’s been winning his fights against high quality opposition. What Martirosyan can’t afford if he wants a Canelo fight is for him to slip back to fighting the weak opposition he’s been fighting for most of his career.
It’s good that Martirosyan finally stepped it up recently in fights against Erislandy Lara, Demetrius Andrade and Willie Nelson. But Martirosyan has stilled mixed in fighters like Mario Alberto Lozano and Ryan Davis in between those fights. Martirosyan’s got to do better than that if he wants to fight Canelo, because he needs to build his name up more.
It’s doubtful that Austin Trout would want to fight Martirosyan at this point in Trout’s career. We just saw Trout struggle to defeat Daniel Dawson, and he looked really poor. I can’t see Trout agreeing to fight a puncher like Martirosyan because it’s a bad style match-up for him.
Lara might fight Martirosyan if there’s no other options for him, but with Martirosyan ranked at #14 by the WBA, I doubt Lara will waste time picking him out in a voluntary defense.
