By William Mackay: If 39-year-old Ronald “Winky” Wright (51-5-1, 25 KO’s) is 75% of what he used to be in his prime, he’s going to badly school middleweight contender Matthew Macklin (28-2, 19 KO’s) when they meet up on April 9th in their 10 round bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Macklin, 28, is a limited slugger with an inflated record and an even more inflated ranking with the WBA. WBC and WBO.
Macklin is a decent fighter, to be sure, but I see him as the bottom of the pack type around a number #16 fighter overall in the middleweight division. Macklin just has too many holes in his game to beat a guy like Wright unless he’s totally shot. Right now, I’m thinking Wright still has enough left to easily beat Macklin and expose him the same way that Jamie Moore did in his 10th round KO win in September 2006.
Since that fight, Macklin has been padding his record against mostly fringe contenders and B level fighers. I can’t se one fighter among Macklin’s 11 wins that is even remotely a good fighter. Macklin just went life and death with the little known Ruben Varon in December, and is lucky he won that fight. That was a really poor performance from Macklin, but that was him at his best. He’s not going to ever be a really good fighter at middleweight, and he might need to consider moving down to junior middleweight if Wright beats him as bad as I think he will.
Wright is vulnerable himself, as he’s lost his last two fights against Bernard Hopkins and Paul Williams. However, there’s no shame in losing to either of those guys, so I can excuse Wright for the loses. Those are quality fighters and Wright gave both of them trouble and held tough for 12 rounds. Wright has lost a little, but his jab is just as good as it was before. He’ll likely be able to dominate Macklin with that alone.
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