By Allen Fox: Photo credit: Gene Blevins – Hoganphotos/Golden Boy Promotions. Ramiro González – 21-year-old Pable Cesar Cano (22-0-1, 17 KO’s) will be fighting for the vacant WBC light welterweight title on Saturday night against Erik Morales (51-7, 35 KO’s) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Cano has less than half the experience that Morales, and has none of the big fight experience either.
This will be Cano’s first fight against a 1st tier fighter, even a slightly aged and deteriorated one like Morales. It’s still a huge jump up in competition for Cano to be making at this early stage in his career. The WBC has him ranked at number #12, while the other boxing sanctioning bodes don’t see him as a top tier fighter.
However, Cano is young, powerful and he sets a high pace in his fights. He may be good enough to beat Morales, who in truth probably deserve to be ranked anywhere close to his current number #2 WBC ranking in the light welterweight division. When you get an aging fighter like Morales with an inflated ranking facing a young fighter also with an inflated ranking, anything is possible.
Cano looks like a teenager next to a fighter in his last 30s in their recent photos together. A young fighter like Cano can win when you match him against a guy that has been arguably over the hill since 2007.
Cano said this in an interview at RingTV: “I’ve grown up watching Erik Morales. I know his strengths and his weaknesses. While it’s an honor to fight him, I have a style to beat him and win my first championship which is the dream of every fighter.”
Cano is a lot like Marcos Maidana, the last fighter that Morales went up against last April. Morales couldn’t handle the fast pace that Maidana set and even though he fought well, Morales still ended up running out of gas in the last three rounds to lose the fight. Cano is the type of opponent that Morales does well against, but that was a young Morales and we’re talking about a much older El Terrible now. He’s not he once was and would be vulnerable against a lot of the top light welterweights in the division, not just Cano.
Morales will have to be able to fight at a fast pace to win this bout, because he might not have the power to bother Cano much. Morales seems to be unable to fight hard for anything of time without getting winded and needing to slow down. Cano only has to fight hard for three minutes of every round to have a very good chance of winning this fight. A young Morales would destroy Cano, but that fighter is long gone over 3000 yesterdays ago.
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