By Eric Thomas: Former light welterweight and welterweight champion Zab Judah (37-6, 25 KO’s) will be fighting little known Ramon Montano (17-7-2, 2 KO’s) on November 6th in a 10 round stay busy fight at the Palms Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The choice of opponent for Judah seems rather disappointing to be sure, because Judah had the chance of fighting Antonio Diaz on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez bout on September 19th, and chose not to take the fight.

At least if Judah had taken that fight, he would have fought a much better opponent in Diaz and would have had much more visibility because Judah’s fight would have been shown world wide and seen by millions of people.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. It’s unknown whether Judah’s bout against Montano will bring him in more money than he was going to get against Diaz. It probably won’t, which makes it even more confusing why Judah would back out of a fight card that was going to give him so much publicity.

By the time that Judah enters the ring against Montano on November 6th, Judah will have been out of action for an entire year since last fighting against Ernest Johnson last November in 2008. For a fighter like Judah, who has lost four out of his last nine fights, that’s not a wise move for him to be this inactive at this stage in his career.

If anything, Judah needs to be fighting as much as he can while he still has time left in his boxing career. Sooner or later, it’s going to be up for Judah and he’ll have little to show for him last years of his career if he continues with this trend. Judah lost another year of his career following the melee in his fight with Mayweather in 2006.

Judah will likely be able to beat Montano, but the win will prove little because Montano isn’t a top contender. Judah needs to be fighting better opponents than this at this point in his career you would think. His bout against Johnson last year as well as fights against Ryan Davis, Edwin Vazquez and Ruben Galvan, opponents of Judah in the past two years, continue to show that Judah is wasting time in his career against lower ranked fighters rather than facing top contenders.

Montano’s biggest fight of his career is probably his eight round draw with Dmitriy Salita in 2006, a fight in which Montano knocked Salita down twice in the first round. Unfortunately, Montano has struggled in recent years, losing to David Diaz last year by a 10 round decision, and to Robert Frankel and Mark Melligen.

Hopefully, Judah is ready for Montano because judging by his record, it would appear that he can fight a little. If Judah overlooks him, Judah will end up losing another fight and get driven further down in the boxing rankings. The good news is that Montano doesn’t seem to have much power given his small percentage knockout victories during his career.