Fighting to defend his North American Boxing Federation and North American Boxing Organization light middleweight titles and to reinforce the perception that he is in fact ready for his first major title shot, Martirosyan took Ouma’s best for 10 rounds and gave enough in return to prevail via unanimous decision at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
“It’s a very good experience for me,” said Martirosyan, who improved to 27-0 with 17 knockouts. “He came in this fight ready to go That’s the Ouma I wanted, I wanted the best Ouma and that’s what I got.”
Martirosyan’s victory, which headlined the premier broadcast of Top Rank Live on Fox Sports Español, was scored, 97-93, by two of the judges and 97-92 by a third. The News-Press scored the fight, 97-93, in favor of Martirosyan.
Ouma (26-7-1, 16 KOs), a former International Boxing Federation light middleweight champion, who has now lost five of his last six fights, was more often the aggressor throughout the early rounds, but Martirosyan took advantage of his reach and was able to stand toe to toe with Ouma in a match that featured many exciting exchanges.
In the later rounds, Martirosyan began to pull away from Ouma on the scorecards, but never seemed able to fully figure out the southpaw.
“We had a great gameplan, I just went away from gameplan a little bit and made it tougher than I should have,” said Martirosyan, who is trained by Freddie Roach. “I kind of got in the zone and started having a little fun in there. But we got the victory and we’re going to work on correcting things.”
