Sergio Martinez (49-2-2, 28KOs) is counting down the days until his challenge of WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. (46-0-1, 32KOs), which takes place on September 15th at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. In his latest fight blog, Martinez explains some the slow starts in some of his recent fights.
If you could have one fight back to do over, which one would it be and why? In your past couple of fights, you finished very strong but seemed to start slow or require some adjustments. Did you misjudge your opponents, or are there other explanations?
"The one fight I would do over is the Antonio Margarito fight which happened February 19th 2000 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I was knocked out in the seventh round and that is the only fight I truly believe I lost. I was also a puppy compared to what I am today and Margarito was a seasoned fighter at that point. For that particular loss my purse was $800 US. I did not come to my own as a fighter and did not have my trainers Gabriel Sarmiento and Pablo Sarmiento with me so I was a different fighter at that point in my career. I believe if Antonio Margarito and I fought again later on in my career, it would've been a different outcome. In my mind it would be similar to the Pacquiao-Magarito match where Margarito just came forward and the speed of Pacquaio is what ultimately beat Margarito.
"In the Barker fight I hurt my left elbow in training camp 4 days before the fight so for that particular fight I was fighting one handed the whole fight. If you look at the tape of the fight you will see that I mostly threw punches with one arm. I believe if I did not sustain that injury right before the fight the knockout would've came a lot earlier.
"In the Matthew Macklin fight, I expected Macklin to come forward like he has done in the past and we trained for that. But in this particular fight Macklin came in with a different game plan and he started to box which is was different then what we planned but we adjusted to his fight plan and then started to wear him down slowly until the knockout late in the fight."
