WBA World super-bantamweight champion Scott Quigg(30-0-2, 22KO’s) spoke with Fighthype.com after the press conference to officially announce his next title defence against the rugged Spaniard Kiko Martinez(32-5, 24KO’s) on July 18th in Manchester, England.
In the absence of a unification fight with IBF champion Carl Frampton(20-0, 14KO’s), fighting a common opponent in Martinez will give us all a chance to draw some comparisons after we see how Quigg deals with the challenge. Frampton has twice beaten Martinez and is the only man to halt him inside the distance. If Quigg can do a similar job calls for the two champs to meet will become even louder after negotiations to make a summer mega-fight unfortunately crumbled.
Quigg touched on this as he explained that this fight only got made because most of the other high-end fighters at his weight were not too keen on facing him.
“It comes about because we tried making the fight with [WBC titleholder] Leo Santa Cruz, Carl Frampton and other top names in the division, and none of em were dealing. So the next toughest fight out there was Kiko Martinez.”
He then detailed what he knew about his next challenger.
“Everybody knows what Martinez brings; he’s tough, he’s come-forward, he’s a big puncher. He has underrated boxing skills, and he travels well. He went over to Atlantic City and beat Jhonatan Romero[and won the IBF belt], then went to Japan, knocked out [Hozumi] Hasegawa and he’s obviously been over to Ireland twice[ both in losing efforts against Frampton, the latter in which he was dethroned].”
In two meetings with Frampton, Martinez put the Irishman under the kind of pressure nobody else to date has been able to, forcing him to pull out rather spectacular performances each time. Those fights speak to the quality of both men and outline that this fight on July 28th is far from a routine defence. Quigg will have to repel constant attacks from a seriously confident and tough man. He does not move with the same fluidity as Frampton, and so will presumably opt to make use of his sickening body blows in the stead of an evasive game-plan. That may be wishful thinking in hopes of a forehead-to-forehead scrap though.
This is a good, competitive fight on its own but with the added dynamic of the inevitable Frampton comparisons, it serves also to wet the appetite of everyone who has been following the Quigg-Frampton saga thus far.
