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Nelson faces ‘life-changing’ bout
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Southside Boxing Club fighter Willie Nelson will fight Vanes Martirosyan in a 10-round junior middleweight bout on Saturday night at Foxwoods Resort in Connecticut. Showtime will televise the bout.
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
On Sept. 20, Vanes Martirosyan posted side-by-side pictures of boxer Willie Nelson and singer Willie Nelson on his Facebook timeline along with the words “Before” and “After.”
“This is what I imagine Willie Nelson will look like after I’m done with him on 10/4!!” he wrote.
“I guess he’s saying the real Willie Nelson is ugly,” said Southside Boxing Club owner Jack Loew, Nelson’s trainer. “Because he’s saying one of two things: Either he’s going to [make Nelson] look like an ugly old man or he’s going to knock the black off of him.”
Nelson (23-1-1, 13 KOs) will meet Martirosyan in a 10-round junior middleweight bout on Saturday at Foxwoods Resort in Mashantucket, Conn. Showtime will televise the bout.
“I laughed,” Nelson said of the photos. “But I didn’t respond. I don’t get caught up in the hype or the antics.”
After Nelson’s last bout, a shaky 10-round unanimous decision victory over Luis Grajeda on Aug. 8, Loew is less interested in how Nelson looks after Saturday’s fight than how he looks during it.
Nelson stands 6-foot-3 with an 81-inch reach, but he allowed the 5-111/2 Grajeda to get inside and hurt him in the third and eighth rounds.
“When he came out in the 10th round, he threw like three jabs — boom, boom, boom,” Loew said of Nelson. “And this guy like 20 rows up goes, ‘Where the [heck] that been all night?’
“Now you got some drunk [guy] 20 rows up who knows what the [heck] you should be doing, I’m telling you what you should be doing and everybody at ringside is screaming and you wait until the 10th round after getting knocked around like Bambi on Quaaludes and now you want to do it?”
Nelson’s response?
“I got a little frustrated during the fight,” he said. “The guy kept holding and ducking and I got a little careless and made some mistakes. I was so busy trying to hit him with a big shot and take him out that I stepped away from the game plan.”
That strategy won’t work against Martirosyan (34-1-1, 21 KOs), an Armenian born fighter who lives in California but still looks like a KGB hitman. (Area fans might remember him knocking out Willie Lee at Beeghly Center in 2009 on the undercard of Kelly Pavlik’s win over Miguel Angel Espino.)
Martirosyan’s loss came by split decision in a WBO light middleweight title fight against Demetrius Andrade last November. At 6-foot with a 73-inch reach, he doesn’t have Nelson’s physical advantages. But he’s just as talented and has more experience in big fights.
“Let me put it to you this way, very nicely — if he [Nelson] fights like he did in the last fight, he’s gonna lose,” Loew said. “If he boxes, he beats him hands down and might even stop him late in the fight.
“It’s like [analyst] Teddy Atlas said at his last fight, ‘If the young man fights like he’s 6-3, he’s gonna be a world champion. If he fights like he’s 5-8, he’s gonna have a long, hard career.’”
Nelson earned just $15,000 for the Grajeda fight, which was on ESPN2. He’ll make $120,000 for this one, with $20,000 of that going toward bringing in sparring talented partners from New York, Chicago and Cleveland.
If he wins on Saturday, Loew thinks Nelson get a WBO title shot and a $500,000 payday, comparing this bout to Pavlik’s win over Edison Miranda in May 2007. That win led to Pavlik’s title bout with Jermaine Taylor in September 2009.
“It’s a life-changing opportunity,” Loew said. “I seen it happen before — Kelly beat Miranda and our whole life changed.
“If he [Nelson] looks good and smacks this kid around, well, there’s no big, freaky-looking stars out there like him. HBO has no stars. They’re looking for somebody to make a star of.”