With just over a day to go before his South African debut at Emperors Palace, Martin Murray looks in peak physical shape.
The Briton has been in South Africa for 10 days, getting used to altitude and familiarising himself with the environment.
One of the blue bloods of the middleweight division, Murray fights Ishmael Tetteh of Ghana, a rugged journeyman who ought to give him the rounds he needs ahead of more testing ventures later in the year. Murray is in South Africa after signing a promotional deal with Golden Gloves that hopefully will culminate in a world championship fight.
Although he wrapped up sparring in St Helens, his local sessions, at Harold Volbrecht and Colin Nathan’s gyms, have shown a fighter who looks sharp, fit and focused for his headline fight on the “Malice at the Palace” bill.
“He’s not here on holiday,” assured promoter Rodney Berman.
Said Andrew Mikhail, Murray’s business manager: “He’s been so mucked about in the recent past that he’s at the stage where all he wants to do is fight. We’ve been offered great terms, so there can be no slipping up. We have this fight and another in June [in Monte Carlo] before a major outing in November. It is important Martin looks like the world class boxer he is.”
Murray last fought in December with a workmanlike defeat of Sergey Khominsky and before that he suffered his only career defeat, a narrow points loss to division bogeyman Sergio Martinez, almost exactly a year ago to the day.
“South Africans are going to see a boxer in his prime,” said Mikhail. “He’s a defensive master and can do it all.”
