Martin Murray looks to make it fourth time lucky in world title fight against King Abraham

Martin Murray will continue his quest to claim a world title the hard way when he faces Germany's Arthur Abraham for the WBO super-middleweight belt in Hannover next month.

The St Helens scrapper has come up short in three previous world title tilts in Mannheim, Buenos Aires and Monte Carlo, but is unfazed by the prospect of hitting the road once again to claim the crown.

Abraham beat Murray's fellow Briton Paul Smith in a pair of unconvincing title defences last September and February, but subsequently stepped up to stop fellow former champion Robert Stieglitz.

Murray's tortuous world title odyssey began in November 2011 when he travelled to Germany to face home favourite Felix Sturm and he could consider himself unfortunate to miss out on the WBA middleweight title after fighting to a draw.In April 2013 Murray travelled to Argentina to face Sergio Martinez, then considered one of the finest pound-for-pound fighters in the world, for the home favourite's WBC belt.

Victory for Murray would have lifted him among some of the greats of British boxing who went abroad to claim unlikely titles, from Lloyd Honeyghan's epic win over Donald Curry in Atlantic City to John H Stracey deposing Jose Napoles in Mexico City.

And while Murray was not quite able to push into such illustrious company, his competitive performance - which saw him come within three rounds of Martinez on all three of the judges' cards, confirmed him as a true world-level talent.

In February this year, Murray earned more plaudits for venturing where most contemporaries fear to tread and challenging the mighty, concussive-hitting Gennady Golovkin for his WBA 'super' belts.

Again, a fine performance for Murray was ended by an 11th-round stoppage and convinced the St Helen's man to move up in weight - and three inside-the-distance wins since have left Murray, and most of British boxing - hoping it is going to be a case of fourth time lucky.