By Robert Coster

A new face is looming in the junior middleweight division and it is that of 25-year-old Bakhram Murtazaliev (13-0, 11 KOs).

Hailing from Grozny, Russia, Bakhram remembers how he fell in love with the fight game. “I was 10-years-old and watched Roy Jones Jr fighting. That day I decided that I wanted to become a boxer.” Bakhram laced the gloves and became a star amateur boxer ending with a sterling 153-17 record, winning the Russian, Ural and Chechnya titles. Murtazaliev turned pro at age 21, winning five fights before being included on the undercard of the Sergey Kovalev vs Isaac Chilemba title fight (7-11-2016).

He caught the expert eye of Egis Klimas (manager of Kovalev and Lomachenko among others). “He was fighting another unbeaten boy. He dispatched him in two rounds,” said Klimas. After that fight, Bakhram signed a managerial contact with Klimas and he was off to the United States.

Since moving to the USA, Murtazaliev has won seven fights, all by KO. He has won the interim International Boxing Association (IBA) title and defended it on July 18th. Bakhram is ranked 9th by the WBO and 13th by the IBF.

Certainly, Bakhram has yet to face a higher echelon of boxers and he is conscious of it. “Being ranked, I expect that my opposition is going to get tougher.”

What are Bakhram’s assets? Says trainer Abror Tursunputalov, “He’s a big (6′) jr middleweight with power, aggression plus exceptional work ethic.”

Adds Manager Klimas, “His style made for TV.”

And which champion would Bakhram like to face? “Jesse Munguia, the WBO champion. He’s perfect for me. He comes to fight, he’s there to be hit.”

Robert Coster is an excellent judge of boxing talent. To date, seven young fighters from his “New Faces” series have gone on to win world titles (Tomoki Kameda, Evgeny Gradovich, Johan Perez, Nicholas Walters, Ruslan Provodnikov, Emmanuel Rodriguez and Regis Prograis).