Bakhram Murtazaliev says he is considering moving up to 160 pounds to challenge Erislandy Lara for his WBA middleweight title because the other two champions are at 154.
IBF Junior middleweight champion Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) was seemingly frozen out, ignored and outplayed by the top fighters at 154.
Too dangerous?
Bakhram’s third-round knockout of former WBO champion Tim Tszyu on October 19 may have deterred any contenders or champions who would have been willing to fight him before that demolition job. He’s better off staying at 154 pounds because he won’t have better luck moving up to middleweight.
Unfortunately for Murtazaliev, the 41-year-old Lara (31-3-3, 19 KOs) is unlikely to 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 over the past 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 can dig up his management in the IBF rankings. This is both good and bad.
If no good fighters ever want to fight Murtazaliev, he could hold onto his IBF 154-lb title for years without losing it. But on the downside, he won’t make the big bucks he could if the more famous 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 tied to one of the major promotional companies, and that hurt. Promoters like Eddie Hearn and Top Rank would still have had a lot of trouble getting Murtazaliev into fights because he would have been considered too dangerous for other fighters to want to face him.
When you’re as good as Murtazaliev, sometimes it pays not to look that good, because then you can get into fights.
If both champions found opponents at 154, maybe move up to 160 and take Lara’s belt?
— bakhram murtazaliev (@bakhram95) January 13, 2025
