McGrit defends his decision to pull Macklin out

By Jonny Stapleton

Buddy McGrit sang off the better safe than sorry hymn sheet after pulling Matthew Macklin out of his World title fight with Sergio Martinez, with just one round to go.

Macklin’s trainer, who was full of praise for his charges display, believes the referee would have taken action and stopped proceeding in the 12th regardless. The respected trainer stressed he was happy to be the bad guy if it meant his fighter lived to fight another day.

The former two weight world champ, who fought over 20 times in the Garden himself, says the Irish middleweight has nothing to be ashamed of and believes he is a future world champ.

“We had one more round to go, he was starting to get hit with clean shots. So why take a chance for three minutes. You live to fight another day. He has nothing to be ashamed of, he did far better than anyone thought he would. He’s going to be a world champion some day. The referee would have stopped it anyway. Eddie Conn’s a good referee – if we had let him out again and he got knocked down, he would have stopped it.Listen, he’s healthy now, he’s ok. He’ll go home and rest and come back and win a world title.

You could see he was coming apart at the seams. I’m not going to allow that continue.  ” McGrit said after the bout.

 

Sergio Martinez, who maintained his king of the middleweights status by ensuring no fairy tale in New York for Macklin, agrees with his opponents trainers decision to call a halt to the action.

Martinez believes he would have hurt Macklin further in the last round.

“It was the right thing to stop the fight,” Martinez said. “He will now have a tomorrow. He would not have had a tomorrow if they continued the fight.”