CHARLIE EDWARDS knows he has a very real fight on his hands. He makes the second defence of his WBC flyweight title at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday (August 31) against Mexico’s Julio Cesar Martinez.
“It’s the dream for everybody, of course it’s the dream. But for me it would be the beginning. I want to unify all the titles, I want to make history so for me it would be the beginning of my history,” Martinez told Boxing News. “For me I’d be making the first step of that story in history.”
Martinez is a strong fighter from Tepito, a neighbourhood in Mexico City that has produced champions before. “There was my motivation, people who’d done it, who came from Tepito as well,” Julio Cesar said. “[Boxing] went from being something I really enjoyed to becoming my passion and now it’s my life.”
He has a good background in the sport. “When I was at school I had lots of energy, lots of excess energy. I had 250 fights as a young lad [as an amateur]. I lost 20 of them. 230 I won. In four years in a row I won the Golden Gloves trophy so I had a really good history from the early years. I had some difficult fights as an amateur so it was really good preparation. So we’re ready for any style I’ve had experience fighting every boxing style,” he said.
To secure his shot at the WBC title, he stopped Welshman Andrew Selby, a boxer capable of excellence, in Metepec in Mexico. “I expected him to be a difficult fight because he’s a really strong boxer and it was difficult in the first few rounds. So then I began to feel calmer after the first few rounds, I got my rhythm going and then knockout,” Martinez said.
He said of Edwards, “He’s quick, he’s technical, we’ve examined his style. We’re going to put everything into it, we’re prepared for 12 rounds. There’s no doubt we want a knockout but we’re prepared for 12 rounds.”
