Bakhram Murtazaliev eyes Erislandy Lara, but will the fight happen?

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 busy at 154 pounds.

IBF junior middleweight champion Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KOs) has seemingly been frozen, ignored and deviated by the top fighters at 154.

Too dangerous?

Bakhram’s third-round knockout of former WBO champion Tim Tszyu on Oct. 19 may have scared off any contenders or champions who would have been willing to fight him before this mission of destruction. It’s better if he stays at 154 pounds because he won’t have better luck moving up to middleweight.

Unfortunately for Murtazaliev, 41-year-old Lara (31-3-3, 19 KOs) is unlikely to agree to fight him. Since his loss to Jarrett Hurd in 2018, Lara hasn’t fought a top-ranked opponent in seven years.

Lara has enjoyed smaller fighters over the past seven years, including struggling Danny Garcia, Michael Zerafa, Thomas Lamanna, Gary O’Sullivan, Greg Vendetti and Ramon Alvarez.

Unless someone like Turki Al-Sheikh comes to Murtazaliev’s attention to help him get a fight, he will be forced to defend anyone his management can find in the IBF rankings. This is both good and bad.

If no good fighter ever wants to face Murtazaliev, he can retain his IBF 154-pound title for years without losing it. But on the negative side, he won’t be making the big money that he could if the better known guys were willing to fight him.

The cost of avoidance

Before defeating Tszyu, Murtazaliev was a professional for ten years, fighting against little-known opponents. Although he never lost, his career went nowhere.

He wasn’t affiliated with any of the major advertising companies, and that hurt. Promoters like Eddie Hearn and Top Rank would still have had a lot of trouble fighting for Murtazaliev because he would have been seen as too dangerous for other fighters to face him.

When you’re as good as Murtazaliev, sometimes it pays not to look so good because then fights can happen.