By Steve Kim

It was announced by K2 Promotions on Wednesday that a battle of two young lightweights, Ryan 'Blue Chip' Martin (17-0, 10 KO's) and Bryant Cruz (17-1, 8 KO's), will be part of the pay-per-view broadcast on March 18th from the Madison Square Garden in New York.

The event is headlined by Gennady Golovkin's mandatory defense of the IBO, WBA, WBC, IBF middleweights titles against Danny Jacobs.

"It's a good fight, it will be great exposure for Ryan to open up the pay-per-view telecast, his first fight in MSG and he'll be fighting a local fighter in 'Pee Wee' Cruz, who's also got a great record," said Tom Loeffler from the Palm Restaurant in Los Angeles, where a media gathering was held for Carlos Cuadras, who will also be part of this bill as he faces David Carmona.

"So if he's able to perform in the ring the way he looks in training, I think it'll be a great coming out party for Ryan Martin," said Loeffler, who has helped Martin get fights the past year or so after SMS Promotions shuttered it's boxing operations.

When asked if he hoped to sign Martin to a deal, Loeffler stated - "We've put Ryan on a lot of the shows with Gennady and the 'Chocolatito' (Roman Gonzalez) show (on September 10th at the Forum in Los Angeles), so there's nothing official on a promotional basis but we'd definitely like to try to help out Ryan after the troubles he had early in his career and he seems to have really taken to getting the exposure to see his level of expertise increasing."

Gonzalez will also be a part of this card, as he defends his WBC 115-pound title against Wisaksil Wangek.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.