By Dan Ambrose: Zab Judah (40-6, 27 KO’s) will be giving away at least two to three inches in height to the much bigger Kaizer Mabuza (23-6-3, 14 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Prudential Center, in Newark, New Jersey. You don’t like to see a fighter taking on someone as big as Mabuza, especially when that fighter is getting old and coming off an unimpressive win over Lucas Matthysse in his last fight.

Judah, 5’7 1/2″ says his size disadvantage won’t be a problem for him and that he’s beaten plenty of bigger fighters before during his career. However, those fighters haven’t had the offensive work rate of Mabuza or the same kind of power. That’s the whole problem in a nutshell. Judah hasn’t beaten a top fighter – without controversy – since his win over Cory Spinks in 2005. Judah’s wins since then have come against 2nd tier fighters with the exception of his recent extremely controversial victory over Matthysse last November.

Few people believe that Judah actually did enough to win that fight, and I’m in agreement on that. Judah is looking old now, not just in the ring but outside of it as well. He’s had stamina problems in fights in the past five years and nothing seems to have changed on that end looking at his recent fight with Matthysse.

Judah seems capable of fighting hard for little more than five rounds. After that, he tires and is forced to run. Mabuza is going to be putting pressure on Judah the entire time and we’ll likely see Judah fade much quicker in this fight than he did in the Matthysse fight. Mabuza is coming off an impressive win over Kendall Holt last year in which Mabuza just set a very fast pace and overwhelmed Holt with shots until the fight was stopped in the 6th.