Puerto Rican Roman "Rocky" Martinez (26-1-2, 16) may well be one of the luckiest champions in boxing right now having claimed the WBO Super Featherweight in controversial fashion against Miguel Beltran Jr and then retained it in even more controversy against Juan Carlos Burgos. He will now look to extend his reign as champion as he comes up against unbeaten American Diego Magdaleno (23-0, 9) who is stepping up notably for this bout.
Although the 30 year old Martinez has been fortunate in his most recent bouts he is a proven world class fighter who is now having his second reign as a world champion. He's scored notable wins over Francisco Lorenzo, Walter Estrada, Nicky Cook, Daniel Attah and the controversial one over Beltran. The only blotches on his record have come to Jose Leonardo Cruz-who he drew with early in his career, Ricky Burns-who beat Martinez in 2010 and Burgos-who seemed to be denied a clear victory by the judges.
At his best Martinez is a hurtful puncher who can detonate his powerful straight right in impressive fashion whilst also taking heavy punishment himself. At his worst however he's a stiff boxer who can be made to look slow and clumsy and as Burgos showed he can also be worn down with a strong body attack (though admittedly few would have withstood Burgos' body attack that night). He's slow and clumsy but at long range he's very effective and uses his long arms to great effect.
Whilst Martinez is proven at the world level there is a lot of questions marks over him going in to this bout thanks to his lesser than stellar showings against Beltran Jr and Burgos, two opponents who arguably beat Martinez. In fact when you consider the loss to Burns you could make a strong case for Martinez being 1-3 in his last 4 bouts (with only the stoppage over Attah going in his favour).
For unbeaten American Magdaleno this is a massive step up. So far in his career he's been spoken about as a fighter with major potential though he's rarely needed to really prove how good he actually is. In fact the best victories that Magdaleno has scored have come against smaller fighters such as Fernando Beltran and Emmanuel Lucero neither of which will help prepare him for a world title fight with a genuine world level fighter.
Magadaleno's a very talented boxer with quick hands though has appeared to lack power in many of his fights. Although a stoppage of Beltran may convince some that he hits much harder than his record indicates I'm more of the opinion that Beltran's natural size disadvantage helped make Magdaleno's shots seem more powerful than they really were. I'd be shocked if his power had the same sort of effect on a true Super Featherweight like Martinez.
Going in to this bout I'd expect Magdaleno to use his speed and skills to try and over-come the power of Martinez. If he can use feet and stop Martinez from getting off with his power shots he could honestly make this bout look very easily. Sadly for Magdaleno the fact that Alejandro Perez managed to drop him doesn't bode well here and Martinez is a much bigger puncher than Perez.
For some this is the big match up of the weekend and an evenly balance bounced, for me however I can't help but think the step up is simply too much for Magdaleno. Not only is he stepping up in terms of opponent but he's also stepping up to the 12 round distance for the first time and over 12 rounds I'd be shocked if Martinez can't tag him.
Prediction-Martinez TKO8
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