Vanes Martirosyan leaning towards retirement, lashes out at Don King, WBC

Former junior middleweight world title challenger Vanes Martirosyan is leaning towards retirement.

Martirosyan (36-4-1, 21 KO's) is coming off a second-round knockout defeat to former unified middleweight world champion Gennady Golovkin last May when he served as a replacement opponent to current 160-pound king Canelo Alvarez.

The Golovkin fight was Martirosyan's first bout in nearly two years.

"I’ve been through a lot of depression since the Golovkin fight. It’s really hard to always think about a fight where you know that wasn’t you in there. I still get tagged in posts of the fight, and it’s a reminder every day. It’s something that I want deleted because it wasn’t me in there and at the same time I did favors for Don King. I did a favor for HBO too, the show was going to be canceled, I saved a lot of people millions of dollars, and at the end, I didn’t get treated the way I should have gotten treated. Don took a lot of money from that fight, and I just got a 1099 (tax form) for the amount that he took. He wants me to pay taxes for the money that he took from me, it’s really ridiculous," Martirosyan, 32, a native of Abovyan, Armenia, told On The Ropes Boxing Radio.

Other than depression, Martirosyan is also claiming that King is attempting to have him foot a tax bill.

"Everybody said that Don King is a piece of sh*t, a bad promoter, a snake. The reason I went to him alone was because I wanted him to do at least one fighter good, at least be good to one person in your life. I tried to go against everybody, and I got really screwed over.

"When I signed with Don King, he gave me $300,000 as a signing bonus. When the Golovkin fight happened, he said, 'I’ve invested a lot of money in you, let me make some of that money back.' We went fifty-fifty on $400,000; we split it in half. I ended up with $160,000, and he took $225,000, and he’s taxing me for the money he took. I even asked his lawyers to fix this, and I still haven’t heard from them, and it’s been a week and a half already."

Martirosyan is not only miffed with King, but he also holds a grudge with the WBC for never receiving an order to fight for the 154-pound title when he was listed as the mandatory challenger.

In January of 2018, the WBC ordered Maciej Sulecki to face Martirosyan in a junior middleweight final eliminator to determine a mandatory for former titleholder Jermell Charlo, but the fight never happened. In fact, a majority of fights ordered by the WBC at their annual convention never materialize.

"I have nothing against Don King or any of these people in a bad way, I just don’t know why they are treating me like this. Especially the WBC, I am really mad at the WBC, very upset at them. They are like no good, they think that they care about fighters, bullsh*t they care about fighters, they don’t," Martirosyan added.

Martirosyan is still willing to fight at 154-pounds. However, he will refuse to be involved with the WBC in any fashion going forward.

"(I am willing to fight) Jaime Munguia, the WBO champ, I don’t want anything to do with the WBC, Munguia is a good fight to take, Jarrett Hurd, all of the champions! Anybody, I’ll fight anybody, any of the top guys, any of the champions. Not at middleweight, that’s even my weight, 154 is my weight class, and I want to fight Hurd or any of guys."