By Jason Kim: The April 9th match-up between Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s) and 34-year-old Erik Morales (51-5, 35 KO’s) will be a great example of what happens when you take a guy that’s been out of the ring for too long, make him up move up in weight several divisions, and then put him in with the hardest puncher in that division. Morales is going to get massacred in this fight and that’s basically all you can say about it.
Morales would be beaten to a pulp even against the lighter punchers at the top of the light welterweight food chain like Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander, Andriy Kotelnik and Amir Khan. But against a big puncher like Maidana, this is going to be a horrible slaughter.
The good news is that they’ve packaged a decent undercard with this fight with James Kirkland fighting a still to be determined opponent, Robert Guerrero facing Michael Katsidis in lightweight action and Paulie Malignaggi possibly fighting on the card against Jose Miguel Cotto, the older brother of WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto. If the Maidana-Morales fight turns out to be a huge blowout, like I think it will, at least boxing fans won’t feel entirely ripped off seeing the Katsidis-Guerrero fight, Kirkland and possibly Malignaggi-Cotto in action.
Maidana has looked overpowering in fights against Khan, Victor Cayo and Victor Ortiz in the past couple of years. Maidana lost the Khan fight by a 12 round decision but came away smelling like a rose because of the way he fought in the bout with the beating he inflicted on Khan in the last three rounds of the bout. It was a fight where Maidana gained more than lost anything.
Morales has won his three fights since returning to the ring from a three year retirement in 2010, but hasn’t looked good in any of the fights. He’s beaten some decent fighters in Jose Alfaro, Willie Limond and Francisco Lorenzo but taken a lot of punishment in each of the fights and not impressed.
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