Bakhram Murtazaliev says he’s considering moving up to 160 pounds to challenge Erislandy Lara for his WBA middleweight title because the other two champions at 154 are busy.
The IBF Junior middleweight champion Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) has seemingly been frozen out by the top fighters at 154, ignored, and swerved.
Too Dangerous?
Bakhram’s third-round knockout of former WBO champion Tim Tszyu on October 19th may have scared off any contenders or champions who would have been willing to fight him before that demolition job. He’s better off staying put at 154 pounds because he won’t have any better luck going up to middleweight.
Unfortunately for Murtazaliev, it’s unlikely that the 41-year-old Lara (31-3-3, 19 KOs) will agree to fight him either. Lara hasn’t fought a high-level opponent in seven years since his loss to Jarrett Hurd in 2018.
Lara has feasted on lesser fighters in the last seven years, including washed-up Danny Garcia, Michael Zerafa, Thomas Lamanna, Gary O’Sullivan, Greg Vendetti, and Ramon Alvarez.
Unless someone like Turki Al-Sheikh takes notice of Murtazaliev to help him get fights, he will be stuck defending whoever his management can dig up in the IBF’s rankings. That’s both good and bad.
If no good fighters ever want to fight Murtazaliev, he can hold onto his IBF 154-lb title for years without losing it. But on the negative side, he won’t make the big money that he could get if the more known guys were willing to fight him.
The Cost of Avoidance
Before beating Tszyu, Murtazaliev had been a professional for ten years, fighting little-known opposition. Despite never losing, his career went nowhere.
He wasn’t hooked up with one of the big promotional companies, and that hurt. Promoters like Eddie Hearn and Top Rank would still have had a lot of problems getting into fights for Murtazaliev because he would have been seen as too dangerous for other fighters to want to face him.
When you’re as good as Murtazaliev, sometimes it pays off not to look so good because then you can get fights.
If both champions at 154 have found opponents, maybe move up to 160 and take Lara belt?
— bakhram murtazaliev (@bakhram95) January 13, 2025
2025-01-14 06:21:41
