There was a bit of irony in seeing junior middleweight Vanes Martirosyan watching his gym mate, Peter Quillin, spar from the ring apron at the Wild Card Boxing Club last week. ?Kid Chocolate? will be heading off to Mexico next week to take on Craig McEwan in the opening bout on the November 5th edition of ?Boxing After Dark? on HBO. Martirosyan could?ve been featured in that night?s main event versus the hard-hitting Alfredo Angulo; instead, he faces Richard Gutierrez, 26-7-1 (16), on tonight?s edition of ?Top Rank Live? from Thackerville, Oklahoma at the WinStar Casino.
So why is James Kirkland facing ?Perro? instead?
?I mean, I wanted the fight. I really did. I even want it now,? said Martirosyan, ?but I was going through problems with my manager, the one I had before and I was in negotiations and all that stuff. So I have a new manager (his uncle, Serg) now and when we tried to make the fight happen, they said, ?Oh, you said no, already.? So I don?t know what my last manager said or didn?t. I wanted the fight and I still want the fight and they came to me with a really low offer and they offered him like four times more and I said, ?If I?m going to go over there and fight him in his hometown, I should at least get something better than what he?s getting.??
He added, ?I just said no to the first offer and all of a sudden- the fight is off.?
To go to the root of the problems, you have to go back to last June when Martirosyan made his HBO debut by defeating Joe Greene in a rather dreary ten-rounder. But in winning, he lost. In failing to impress the network, he became a bit of a quandary for Top Rank. You had a fighter who now has certain financial expectations saddled with the stark reality that he isn?t wanted on the platforms that can make said expectations a reality.
Carl Moretti of Top Rank admits that the Greene fight did more harm than good. ?Yeah, sometimes when a fight doesn?t turn out the way you want it to or it doesn?t impress people, it can be a step back for a fighter?s career.?
