For years Bakrahm Murtazaliev was content to have poor showings against low level fighters and taking step aside money

[Mammoth]

2024 comes around and he becomes the first guy to stop both Jack Culcay and Tim Tszyu.

That's some pretty rare improvement.

[El_Mero]

Good for him. Free money, then showed up on the big stage and put a punctuation type performance. 154 is THEE hottest division in boxing rn.

[Roadblock]

2024 comes around and he becomes the first guy to stop both Jack Culcay and Tim Tszyu.

That's some pretty rare improvement.

Things happen in life that can be like a handbrake, then the universe releases the brakes and things start falling into place, life is full of these twists and turns the older you get the clearer you see alignment of things in the background that needed to be addressed to realize your true goals and purpose, hard work always pays off.

[famicommander]

He took the step aside money because he knew Charlo wasn't gonna fight him anyway.

[Mammoth]

He took the step aside money because he knew Charlo wasn't gonna fight him anyway.

Lol ok.

[just the facts]

For years????

[SceneBoxer]

Bakrahm "The Step Aside King" Murtazaliev ....

[crimsonfalcon07]

Highly doubt that was by choice. He was a low profile fighter getting screwed by the alphabet organizations who were intent on letting their high profile fighter take unifications, which trump mandatories. Wouldn't be surprised if that was a "you can take the step aside money or you can have nothing and lose your spot in the rankings". You fight the fights you get offered against the guys who will agree to fight you. Don't know why that's so hard to understand.

[Mammoth]

Highly doubt that was by choice. He was a low profile fighter getting screwed by the alphabet organizations who were intent on letting their high profile fighter take unifications, which ***** mandatories. Wouldn't be surprised if that was a "you can take the step aside money or you can have nothing and lose your spot in the rankings". You fight the fights you get offered against the guys who will agree to fight you. Don't know why that's so hard to understand.

The IBF didn't allow a low profile guy to get his title shot? Sounds made up. Egis Klimas never once pushed for the fight to happen either. The guy looked like ass his whole career all the way up till the vacant title shot against Culcay. Nobody thought he was any good.

[drablj]

For years????

he was ibf mandatory (#1) for 4 1/2 years. when charlo was unifying, they had in writing that murtazaliev is next. then charlo still ignored this man and decided to fight once a year for a few more years. then he did NOTHING and held the belts hostage (this is what i hate so much in pro boxing) instead of vacating all of them.

finally bakhram won the title this year. i thought they intended to kill him when i saw the fight is on ramadan. now he defended it against the highest rated available contender. lubin refused their eliminator which means tim was next.

this is what a champion should do. but this is what you hate ibf for. they order eliminator but some privileged boxers refuse. then you get guys who actually want to fight in eliminators but they are not american in many cases. then "fans" call them nobodies, bums, undeserved mandatories, weak etc.
1) boxing is NOT only americans for americans.
2) ibf, murtazaliev, fortea, eifert, meng, hrgovic, dasmarinas, karen are NOT the guys you should criticize. those who deserve that are boxers like lubin for refusing eliminators. NOBODY talk about that. i never saw anybody else here call out those fighters. people don't criticize thurman for his totally undeserving scheduled shot at tim (champion) in march. when in reality if lubins and thurmans and buatsis fought in eliminators when they could/should, there would be no reason to complain about mandatories or sanctioning bodies.
3) if murtazaliev demanded immediate shot when he first could, EVERYBODY here would hate him even if that's his right. imagine the outrage and offensive words thrown at jermell and bakhram if they fought (like they SHOULD) then instead of undisputed unification 1 & 2. obviously bakhram would have liked his shot when he was 27 more than now (31 years old, not young, end of prime). nobody cares about that because he's not from usa, uk and mexico. people here only care about fighters from these 3 countries (or 1 of them) until at least (for some fans) a boxer becomes borderline hall of famer. if you only watch 2-3 american channels, sky in britain and do no research, obviously you wouldn't know much. what kind of fan is that? then you only know about fighters which are hyped/promoted by 3-4 biggest promoters in america and england and absolutely nothing more. of course everybody is a bum, weak mandatory and boxing is dying to you when you are uninformed on the subject.
4) if there were no eliminators and enforced mandatories, boxing would be even worse, totally unworthy of following. it would be all inhouse random fights until a champion is over 30. then 1 tough fight cashout and retirement. that would be total trash of a sport. again, blame fighters like buatsi who was rated wbc, wba and wbo #1 and the second best rated ibf challenger. he could have fought bivol last year or this year after bivol defeated his mandatory zurdo and was free. i hate fighters/cowards like that. i have seen exactly zero posts calling buatsi out for this. but you have the gall to talk bad about boxers who want to fight eliminators and are unknown to you because you refuse to research.

i can't make this up. boxing fans are the worst definitely.