Lightweight, and increasingly junior welterweight, are about as hot as boxing gets.
One of the sport’s biggest draws, Gervonta Davis, calls the division home. So do undisputed champion Devin Haney, Shakur Stevenson, and Vasyl Lomachenko while just five pounds north one can find Teofimo Lopez, Ryan Garcia, Subriel Matias, Jose Ramirez, Regis Prograis, and quality rising contenders like Gary Antuanne Russell.
It’s a wealth of depth and talent the likes of which doesn’t come along all the time. Middleweight and super middleweight had it in the 90s. Flyweight and junior bantamweight had it for much of the last decade.
To have it with star power and the chance for new wealth makes it all the better. Davis-Garcia was a blockbuster earlier this year. Haney-Lomachenko wasn’t as big but paid off nicely enough. In fields this crowded, sometimes being good isn’t good enough.
Enter Frank Martin (17-0, 12 KO).
The 28-year old “Ghost” announced his arrival as a real player in the pack last December. In what was viewed as a pick ‘em fight going in, Martin took undefeated Michel Rivera to school over 12 rounds. He outboxed, outfought, and outthought Rivera while pitching a near-shutout.
The result shouldn’t have been such a revelation. Trainer Derrick James has emerged as one of the great teachers in the game and Martin’s all-around game reflected that solid foundation. It was a performance that could remind one of someone like a Stevie Johnston from another generation, a fighter where the sum of his parts suggests a long night for anyone for years to come.
For Martin, that could be the uphill battle. Johnston, as good as he was, never got his chance to share the ring with a Shane Mosley or Floyd Mayweather.
So far Martin isn’t not flashy and he’s not played the knockout artist. He’s just really good and building on the Rivera fight with more performances like the Rivera affair will be essential. He gets his next chance this Saturday (Showtime, 10 PM EST) when Martin is matched against 32-year old 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Artem Harutyunyan (12-0, 7 KO) in his latest main event.
Harutyunyan is making his first start since June 2022 in a professional career that has developed slowly since 2017. Twelve fights in six years isn’t exactly strapping a rocket to a talent but Harutyunyan has a chance Saturday to catch up in a hurry. Martin is ranked in the top ten at lightweight by all four major sanctioning bodies and in press rankings from TBRB, The Ring and ESPN. Harutyunyan is ranked number eight by the WBC.
Martin might be fighting to keep his place but Harutyunyan is fighting to build one of his own. Could it be a recipe for a good fight?
On a weekend where the spotlight will reside with them before a flourish of activity later in the month, it could be a best-case scenario for both: a fight that gets people talking.
For Martin, the best case is to keep people talking about him the same way they were after the Rivera fight. The more he stands out in a crowded room, the sooner he steps out from the crowd.
Cliff’s Notes…
The loss of the Nonito Donaire-Alejandro Santiago fight from the Martin-Harutyunyan undercard is a gain for the Spence-Crawford show. That’s a solid undercard bout for the paying audience…Tyson Fury’s erratic tenure as the best heavyweight in the world took another downturn this week with the announcement he’ll likely use what could be his only appearance of 2023 in a farce fight with MMA star Francis Ngannou. There will be comparisons to Mayweather-McGregor but this is different. Floyd’s legitimate active career was done then and he was years removed from the welterweight crown. One could also evoke Muhammad Ali-Antonio Inoki but Ali fought Ken Norton that same year along with three other title defenses. By the time Fury fights a serious contender again, it might be nearly two years since the Dillian Whyte fight in a run following his win over Wladimir Klitschko that also included some three years out of the ring (two backdated as a PED suspension). That win, and Fury’s trilogy with Deontay Wilder, displayed a fighter with greatness in him. Too much of the rest of the time has been a waste…All of this would matter more if the rest of the top of heavyweight was more interesting right now. Oleksandr Usyk has fought once a year for four years straight and neither he nor Deontay Wilder have anything official on the books yet this year. Speculation about big happenings just over the horizon that could also involve Anthony Joshua will keep hopes up but it’s hard to see heavyweight as anything other than a mess right now. It’s one of the few places boxing hasn’t impressed in an otherwise banner year.
Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com