By Chet Mills: Talented but flawed middleweight Matthew Macklin (20-2, 16 KOs) will be fighting for the first time under new trainer Buddy McGirt on Saturday when Matthew takes on Mexican journeyman fighter Luis Ramon “Yory Boy” Campas (91-11, 73 KOs) at the National Stadium, in Dublin, Ireland. Macklin, 25, recently quit British trainer Billy Graham in a move done for Matthew to work on other areas of his game, such as defense and boxing, rather than the brawling, aggressive style of Ricky Hatton, who also fights under Graham. Macklin, an exciting fighter with skills not unlike a smaller, younger Evander Holyfield, wasn’t really comfortable with the brawling style of fighting where he was taking a lot of unnecessary punishment in many of his bouts.

While his offensive skills made him exciting to watch, his defense was essentially wide open, allowing him to be hit frequently by his opponents. For the past month, Macklin has been training in Florida with McGirt, a trainer that specializes in developing the defensive skills of his fighters. Macklin already has a strong foundation with his strong offensive skills, and his foot movement is likewise quite good. McGirt’s job will be for him to teach Macklin how to pace himself more, fight in a controlled manner and learn to fight more on the outside. In the past, Macklin would tend to go all out in the first six rounds of his fights. Usually that would be enough for him to stop most of his overmatched opponents.

However, when he went up against Andrew Facey and Jaime Moore, Macklin wore himself out trying to knock them both out. In the case of Moore, Macklin exhausted himself and suffered a brutal 10th round knockout loss. I saw the knockout coming as early as the first round when Macklin came out on fire, throwing countless punches in the opening round and looking really tight. I didn’t help that he was fighting at light middleweight in which he was forced to drop a lot of weight to make the division weight limit. Now, however, he’s fighting at middleweight where he’s much more comfortable.

Macklin made little effort to block punches in his two losses, though he did show an uncanny ability to duck shots and slide out of the way of punches, but as far as blocking any of them, he was unable to do so. He’s got to learn to how relax and box more if he has any hopes of challenging for a major middleweight title. In terms of overall skills and potential, he’s light years better than fighters like Moore and Facey, both of whom Macklin will probably be able to soundly beat if he can pick up some badly needed defensive training from McGirt.

Though Macklin has only had a month under McGirt’s tuteldge, Campas will be a good test for how much Macklin has progressed as a fighter. Campas, 36, a former IBF light middleweight champion, is clearly on the downside of his career having lost five out of his last eleven fights. He was most recently stopped in the 7th round by Amin Asikainen in February. Campas looked decent in the fight, but clearly slower than in his prime. He also appeared unsuited for the middleweight division because his frame is small for a middleweight.

Campas figures to try and make it a dog fight as much as possible and it will be interesting to see if Macklin can avoid brawling with him. That’s not to say that Macklin couldn’t beat Campas in the style of fighting for I firmly believe he can due to his youth, but Macklin needs to use this fight as training for future bouts. Macklin can’t afford to continue with his old style of fights if he plans on fighting for one of the top middleweight bouts one day in the future. That style of fighting may work with hard punchers like Kelly Pavlik, but it wouldn’t be something that is suited for Macklin, in that he doesn’t hit quite as hard as Pavlik.