By Sean McDaniel: 34-year-old Erik Morales is hoping to challenge for a title on the light welterweight division if he can beat Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s) in two weeks in their important bout at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Morales has previously won three world titles and wants to capture a 4th and 5th belt.
The fact that Morales feels that he has a chance of winning another one to two titles suggests that he sees more in what he has left compared to most boxing fans. Morales, although respected, isn’t being given much of a chance to beat Maidana in their April 9th fight. Maidana isn’t a tough nut to crack in terms of figuring out a game plan to beat him.
It’s pretty obvious that Maidana has problems against fighters that stay on the outside, move a lot and throw a lot of jabs. However, even when fighters are using a perfect fight strategy against Maidana, they take terrible punishment and end up barely winning. This was certainly the case of Andriy Kotelnik’s win over Maidana in 2009, and it was also the case with Amir Khan’s 12 round decision win over Maidana last December.
Kotelnik didn’t beat Maidana in the minds of many boxing fans, who felt that Kotelnik won a hometown decision. I saw the fight myself and felt that Maidana should have been given the decision. As for Morales, he’s just not as big nor as strong or young as Kotelnik and Khan were when they beat Maidana. Morales can’t do the same things that Khan and Kotelnik did because he doesn’t have their size, their speed or their ability to throw crisp jabs.
Morales has always been a slugger and he remains one, but in the wrong division. Morales has no business fighting at light welterweight and would be much better off if he could take off some of his jellyrolls and move down to featherweight or super featherweight. At light welterweight, Morales is too weak and frail for this division. He has the wrong build going up against one of the hardest punchers in the division.
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