By Francisco Salazar

Foxwoods, CT - In an exciting and action fight, junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan won a hard-fought 10 round unanimous decision over Willie Nelson.

Martirosyan was dedicating his fight against Nelson to the memory of Dan Goossen, who passed away earlier in the week due to liver cancer. Martirosyan had fought once under the Goossen Tutor Promotions banner, a win over Mario Lozano on March 21.

 "We had to turn this into a fight," Martirosyan said. "He is tall, he has long arms and it's hard to fight a guy like that. Around the seventh or the eighth I thought about [Diego] Corrales vs. [Jose Luis] Castillo and going to war. I knew we needed to dig deep to win this fight and that's what we did."

"It's been a hard week for us. Around round eight, I thought about Dan and he made me fight hard. This was for Dan. I know he was watching me and this is for him. We love him and we miss him."

Martirosyan's trainer and Dan's brother, Joe, agreed: "He asked us to win this fight and we honored that request as best as we could."

"It was a good, tough fight. What else would you expect from two guys in the top 10 in the division? Of course I'd like another shot at him."

Nelson entered the bout against Martirosyan having won seven bouts in a row. He was coming off a 10 round unanimous decision win over Luis Grajeda on August 8.

Nelson used his height and reach advantage to repeatedly land to the head of Martirosyan in the first round. From the second round on, it was Martirosyan who landed the harder and more effective punches through the first half of the fight. A counter right hand to the head seemed to buckle Nelson's legs in the second round.

Martirosyan continued to beat Nelson to the punch, despite the fact he was cut along his left eyebrow in the fourth round. The cut seemed to inspire Nelson to increase his aggression, allowing him to outwork Martirosyan in the sixth and seventh rounds.

Martirosyan swung more momentum in his favor in the eighth round. As he had in the first half of the fight, Martirosyan was able to walk through Nelson's punches to land repeatedly to Nelson's head. Martirosyan was much busier and seemed to have more energy, as Nelson's punch output dropped and was mostly throwing arm punches by the end of the fight.

Nelson felt he won the fight.

"I thought I won, but the judges saw otherwise," Nelson said. "I can't complain. Vanes has some nice pop and hand speed. He's nothing special, but I felt he fought me differently than he has past opponents. I just need to keep fighting and keep moving forward and we'll see what happens."

All three judges scored the bout in favor of Martirosyan, 97-93, 97-93, and 96-94.

The Armenian-born Martirosyan, from Glendale, Calif., improves to 35-1-1, 23 KOs. Nelson, from Cleveland, Ohio, drops to 23-2-1, 13 KOs.