ISRAIL Madrimov now has two losses and a draw on the record, but his intention to take hard fights means opportunities will come his way.
The former champion is currently in the middle of medical rehabilitation in Uzbekistan. Madrimov’s manager Vadim Kornilov says that while some people speculated that his man swerved Serhii Bohachuk simply because the Vergil Ortiz Jr fight was offered, that wasn’t exactly the case.
“He was having issues. Like, from what the doctor said, he went through a virus, a symptomatic virus, something like a bronchitis virus. But he didn’t really feel it. Because he was training, it didn’t affect him as much.
“But once they tested his blood, they saw inflammation and stuff. And they saw that the virus had passed him because he wasn’t feeling well while sparring.
“So that’s why we canceled Bohachuk [opting for] recovery and do the Ortiz fight. But when he was training for the Ortiz fight, he started having setbacks of the same type of situation where he goes into sparring and can’t breathe as well.”
Kornilov stated that rather than canceling the Saudi outing and the danger of being branded an unreliable sick note by His Excellency, the risk and opportunity were weighed up in advance.
“If you look at his fight, like round four, round five, he was breathing like he never was before,” added Kornilov.
“He was breathing like it’s the end of the fight. And I knew that something was going on. And he told me, I wasn’t feeling like I usually do. So now we’ll just take care of that, make sure that he’s fully recovered, that he’s breathing like he should be breathing and he’s feeling confident and 100 per cent.
“And then we’ll go back and see what kind of fight we can get. There’s a lot of conversation about people not wanting to fight him or not wanting to take a risk. With Riyadh Season and His Excellency, when we fought Crawford, it was very important that we wanted to get a title back because Madrimov just won against Kurbanov.”
The ideal situation for Team Madrimov is to fight and win a world title, then try to force a rematch with the likes of Ortiz Jr. or even Terence Crawford. The latter being unlikely. Perhaps a bout with the dangerous IBF champion Bakhram Murtazaliev could be entertained.
“100 per cent. I spoke to my partner and to Joel [Diaz, trainer] and all the guys. We’re ready to fight Murtazaliev. That’s a good fight. We don’t feel like that’s the toughest fight,” agreed Kornilov.
“We feel he’s a great fighter. No disrespect, but we’re not looking at that as a big risk or something like that. We feel like it’s a good fight and it will be competitive, but we’re confident Madrimov will do good in that fight.
“We just need maybe a little time. If they’re ready to wait four or five months, we’ll be ready.”
