“It would have been great to get a clean knockout, but we got a third-round stoppage and Charles is the new champion.?-Manager Mike Borao
??for the time being at least, Martin has a ?world championship? belt. It?s hard to imagine the heavyweight title being more devalued than it has been in recent years. But this fight did just that.??Thomas Hauser
Charles Martin?s post-fight comments were a blend of faint humility and macho posturing; they should have been 100% humility. Had he said, for example, that he ?feels very fortunate to have beaten Vyacheslav Glazkov in the manner that he did and that he is looking forward to showing the fans that he truly can fight,? there would have been few boos and minimal bad press. Instead, he snatched defeat from victory with the following:
?Unfortunately it ended the way it did but he [Glazkov] was a warrior, he’s a good fighter. I hope he’s OK and can continue with his career.
“I knew he was 20 pounds lighter than me, so I couldn’t throw a three-piece combination or anything more than that because he wouldn’t be there to get hit with it. I’m more of a calculated fighter and I won’t throw it unless I’m gonna land it. I had to wait until he slowed down. We train to get stronger as the fighters get slower. When they show weakness and fatigue in the ring, that’s when we capitalize.
“I’m a patient fighter. I know we had 12 rounds. I was gonna catch up to him eventually. I knew he couldn’t get in to do what he wanted to do, because I kept my distance, but we were gonna catch up eventually.
“I want to unify all the belts. I want to fight Tyson Fury, I want to fight Deontay Wilder, everything. I want all the hardware. Tyson Fury has more belts, so we’ll take that first. As long as the fans want it, I’m with it.
“I didn’t see it. I heard he [Wilder] got a vicious knockout tonight. But yeah, I’ve seen that he can’t fight a southpaw.”
Meanwhile, Martin, the new IBF heavyweight champion, is already being linked to unification bouts with Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder. For his sake, those better be unfounded rumors.
