Gennady Martirosyan batters Vitor Sa in 3

October 30, 2010 - 13:26 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenian middleweight Gennady Martirosyan can be everything but a boring fighter. He is always expected to turn a usual tune-up into a gun skirmish with fists being his firearms. He once again lived up to these expectations with another scintillating performance in the second defense of his WBO European title against Portuguese veteran Vitor Sa.

Martirosyan, 30, used a bit of Arthur Abraham-like approach utilizing a tight block and pressing his opponent around the ring with a steady diet of big punches. Heavily-tattooed Sa, 37, was able to avoid heated exchanges in the first but was nevertheless dominated by sharper and faster St. Petersburg-based Armenian. The second round saw Martirosyan taking a moment of rest, and Sa started to throw punches of his own immediately firing Gennady up and turning this contest into the brawl.

The third round found Martirosyan in his usual mode - with a severe bloodlust and an obvious desire to induce a war in the ring. That was exactly what he had done, making a street brawl alongside a shoot-out in the squared circle. Being a bit reckless Martirosyan got an opportunity to land his most telling blows, while Sa was unlucky to learn that his foe was both light-fisted to produce an immediate knockout and sharp and aggressive enough not to miss any punches. Sa went down after a monstorus right hand by Gennady. He barely got up but Martirosyan was all over him and landing not at will but in increasingly automatic string of punches. He went down on a combination of punches, was up at "seven" but in no condition to continue thus forcing referee Jose Martinez to stop the action at 2:42 of the third round, boxingscene.com reported.

Martirosyan moves up to 21-2, with 10 KOs, and he can be the next-in-line to fight former champion Kelly Pavlik in a final WBO eliminator. Overmatched Sa slips down to 22-5, with 4 stoppage wins.