By Sean McDaniel: Former three division world champion Erik Morales (41-6, 35 KO’s) has got a ton of mileage on his body from the many ring wars he’s been through during his long career. On April 9th, Morales faces Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Maidana is a fighter with a lot of power but very limited skills and poor stamina. We already saw how beatable Maidana is in his losses to Andriy Kotelnik, Amir Khan and the way that he struggled to beat journeyman DeMarcus Corley in August 2010.

Maidana’s poor hand speed and tendency to run out of gas when he fights hard makes him vulnerable against fighters that can box and stay away from his big shots. Khan did little other than the slap, hold and run all night long, yet he was still able to pull out a decision over Maidana. And Kotelnik mostly jabbed and countered Maidana in beating him by a 12 round decision.

Unfortunately, Morales isn’t much of a boxer and doesn’t have the ability to run the way Khan did in his win over Maidana. At the same time, Morales has too much pride to hold the way that khan did and he’s certainly not going to throw meaningless flurries that wind up as little more than slaps against the gloves and the face of Maidana. Morales puts power in his shots and places them well. If he wins the fight, it will be because he earned it by landing clean effective shots.

However, Morales is going to be a stationary target for Maidana’s shots and that’s likely going to be his downfall in this fight, because you can’t stand in front of Maidana all night long without getting beaten up and hurt. Even Kotelnik, who has a steel chin, took a serious pounding in his costly win against Maidana and ended up with a nose that looked as if it were broken and a badly swollen up face by the end of the fight.