It would be easy to say that rare is the superstar boxer who finds himself in the plight that Ring middleweight champion Sergio Martinez faces.
Martinez is one of boxing?s most gifted fighters and is ranked third in the Yahoo! Sports poll. He?s an entertaining scrapper who scored five knockdowns of a very difficult Sergiy Dzinziruk in his last outing.
He?s got a model?s looks and attracts women easily. He should be a marketer?s dream.
And yet, he?s in an eerily similar place as heavyweight champions Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko. He is so good that, if he gets past Darren Barker in his HBO-televised bout from Atlantic City, N.J.?s Boardwalk Hall on Saturday, he will have no legitimate first-rate competition.
His promoter, Lou DiBella, has been reduced to singing the praises of Martinez?s opponents in his last two outings in a largely vain effort to build some interest in the bouts. Just as with the Klitschko brothers, Martinez is expected to win big and without incident.
DiBella is offering every sort of discount imaginable, yet he?ll be lucky to have 5,000 people in the arena on Saturday.
Rival promoter Bob Arum, whose own middleweight champion, World Boxing Council champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., has a belt that is as legitimate as a trinket purchased at Toys R Us, has been routinely bashing Martinez.
DiBella?s efforts to drum up interest in Saturday?s fight has been complicated by the presence of baseball playoff games in New York, 120 miles away, and in Philadelphia, 60 miles away, that will attract huge crowds.
?There will be 50,000 people sitting in each stadium and those are my two biggest markets [for this fight],? DiBella said glumly.
Barker is 23-0 with 14 knockouts, but he?s largely unknown outside of the U.K. Martinez is the first recognizable fighter he?s fought, though that?s no stroke against him since there are so few quality middleweights around these days.
