By Dan Ambrose: 37-year-old WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (51-5-1, 37 KO’s) has been looking older and older in each successive fight in the past two years, and was recently handily beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr. by a lopsided decision last year. On Saturday night, I expect Marquez to look more than his age against the powerful Michael Katsidis (27-2, 22 KO’s) when they meet up in a 12 round bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Marquez has got the experience in this fight, but he’s getting old and he’s really more of a pumped up featherweight than a real lightweight. He’s not at the right weight for this division, and is facing a fighter in 30-year-old Katsidis, who easily could fight at welterweight and still be competitive. Marquez is the better fighter on defense, to be sure. But Katsidis has a way of pressuring his fighters into making mistakes and wading through their defense with his power shots and fast hands.

With his high punch volume, it doesn’t matter how many of Katsidis’ shots are picked off by Marquez, he’s still going to land a lot of head shots against Marquez in this fight. Marquez has great accuracy and excellent counter punching ability. He showed in fights against Manny Pacquiao that he’s got some of the best skills in the sport. However, Katsidis has huge punching power and he hits so hard with every shots, and that’s going to be very hard for the small, aging Marquez to take in this fight without getting cut up and worn down.

Katsidis has the advantage in power and aggression, and that could be the main factor that wins this fight. Sometimes when a fighter gets older like Marquez, it doesn’t matter if they have the better skills anymore. The younger fighter wins on youth alone. But in this case, Katsidis isn’t just younger, he’s also faster, more powerful and has the better work rate. I have a feeling that we’re going to be seeing a boxing icon beaten on Saturday night with Marquez taken out by Katsidis in brutal fashion.