Bakhram Murtazaliev says he is considering moving up to 160 pounds to challenge Erislandy Lara for her WBA middleweight title, as the other two champions at 154 pounds are busy.
IBF junior middleweight champion Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) was seemingly frozen out by top fighters at 154, ignored and deflected.
Too dangerous?
Bakhram’s third-round knockout of former WBO champion Tim Tszyu on October 19 may have scared away any contenders or champions who may have been willing to fight him before this demolition job. He’d better stay at 154 pounds because he won’t have any better luck reaching middleweight.
Unfortunately for Murtazaliev, 41-year-old Lara (31-3-3, 19 KOs) is unlikely to agree to fight him either. Lara hasn’t fought a top opponent in seven years since losing to Jarrett Hurd in 2018.
Lara has feasted on lesser fighters over the past seven years, including Danny Garcia, Michael Zerafa, Thomas Lamanna, Gary O’Sullivan, Greg Vendetti and Ramon Alvarez.
Unless someone like Turki Al-Sheikh pays attention to Murtazaliev to help him fight, he will be forced to defend anyone his management can unearth in the IBF rankings. It’s both good and bad.
If no good fighter wants to face Murtazaliev, he can hold on to his IBF 154-pound title for years without losing it. But on the negative side, he won’t make as much money as he could if the bigger name 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. Even though he never lost, his career went nowhere.
He wasn’t tied to one of the big promotion companies, and that hurt. Promoters like Eddie Hearn and Top Rank would still have had a lot of problems fighting for Murtazaliev 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’s worth it to not look as good because then you can fight.
If both champions at 154 have found opponents, maybe move up to 160 and take Lara’s belt?
– Bakhram Murtazaliev (@bakhram95) January 13, 2025
