By Chris Robinson
Junior middleweight contender Pawel Wolak reached out to me to give his take on a possible fight with unbeaten Vanes Martirosyan. It’s been reported that the two fighters will be meeting on December 3rd on the undercard of the rematch between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito in New York.
Wolak has had an eventful 2011 campaign thus far, stopping Yuri Foreman after six rounds in March at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and following that up by settling for a majority draw against Delvin Rodriguez last month in a thriller. Wolak has been looking at several opponents at 154 pounds and admits that he and his team were shocked to see Vanes’ name in the mix.
“We all were completely surprised by the news from Top Rank putting me against Vanes,” said Wolak. “We were all calling each other to ask if any of us knew and none of us did. That is not even a name that was discussed with us. So to say that both camps have agreed is not true since we just heard about it yesterday and are not interested.”
I had talked to Martirosyan about the fight last night and he seemed to relish an encounter with the aggressive Wolak. Vanes pointed to Wolak’s fight with Rodriguez, a bout in which he took his share of punches and suffered a huge welt above his right eye, claiming that he would ‘destroy’ the Polish fighter if given the chance.
Wolak, of course, has his own assumptions about a meeting with Vanes.
“I like Vanes but the guy can’t resist trashing someone the minute they are mentioned as a possible opponent. It’s all good. He is a decent fighter but he is right though, you are only as good as your last fight. So if [Saul] Roman could put him down in the first round in his last fight, what does that tell you? My power and output is like five times that of Roman and he would have been counting stars and he would have been finished,” Wolak said of Martirosyan, who was dropped in his last fight this past June inside of the Staples Center before rallying for a 7th round TKO.
Finishing up, Wolak showed more interest in a fight with IBF junior middleweight champion Cornelius ‘K9’ Bundrage than anything else.
“But as I have said what seems like a million times, Feline Bundrage’s title has been my sole interest. If he doesn’t stop acting like a pretender rather than a contender I will fight to become his mandatory and then he won’t be able to duck me. I just wonder what will happen first, he stops ducking me or he starts collecting social security which is right around the corner.