By William Mackay: European Boxing Union (EBU) middleweight champion Matthew Macklin (28-2, 19 KO’s) will reportedly be facing 39-year-old former IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO junior middleweight champion Ronald “Winky” Wright (51-5-1, 25 KO’s) on April 9th in a defense of Macklin’s EBU title. According to fighthype.com, the Macklin vs. Wright fight will be shown on the undercard of the fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Erik Morales at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

If this was a younger Wright, I would give the 28-year-old Macklin absolutely no chance because he’s not that great of a fighter and is vulnerable against most of the top middleweights in the division and clearly not in the same class as fighters like WBC champion Sergio Martinez and WBO champ Dimitry Pirog. However, against an old and inactive Wright, Macklin probably has enough to beat Wright as long as Macklin throws a lot of punches.

He won’t be able to beat Wright throwing in the lower numbers, because Wright’s jab will set the pace for the fight. But this is the right moment for Macklin to pick off Wright, because Wright has lost his last two fights against Bernard Hopkins and Paul Williams, and Wright has only fought once in the past four years, as he’s wasted tons of time waiting for a huge money fight to drop from the sky into his lap.

Wright should have focused on staying busy and knocking off some of the notable fighters in the middleweight division like Felix Sturm, but instead Wright did zero. The time doesn’t seem to have helped Wright, because he appears to have lost a lot of his skills through age and inactivity. Macklin is currently ranked #4 WBC, #3 WBA, #7 IBF, and#6 WBO. Macklin obviously isn’t as good as his inflated ranking would suggest. I see Macklin as the 16th best fighter in the middleweight division, which is a real compliment to him because he’s improved a lot in the past couple of years.