By Sean McDaniel: The newly crowned WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (30-2, 27 KO’s) was impressed with the fighting ability of 34-year-old Erik Morales (51-7, 35 KO’s) after beating him by a 12 round majority decision on Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. So impressed was Maidana that he compared Morales favorably with WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan, saying “He [Morales] is on the same level as Amir Khan. The only difference is Khan is faster, but he runs. Erik doesn’t run. He stands and fights. It surprised me that he was able to take those punches. It’s very hard to knock him out. You have to hit him with a stick or a hammer.”

Indeed, Morales didn’t run and looked to be about at the same level as Khan. That kind of tells you that Khan not be as good as people think he is, and it also shows how close all these top fighters are in terms of ability. Morales never backed away from Maidana on Saturday night. He stood his ground and fired back punch after punch. All of this while fighting with only one good eye. Morales right eye was effectively closed from the 2nd round on, making it necessary for him to fight with only his good left eye to see the punches coming at him. Morales fought well until around the last minute of the 10th.

At that point Maidana began to hit him at will with power shot as Morales either tired out or was too hurt to fight back like he had in the earlier rounds of the fight. Maidana’s power and work rate were the telling factors in the fight. The judges had the fight close with the scores 114-114, 116-112 and 116-112. Morales could have tipped the fight in his favor had he been busier, but it looked he didn’t have the stamina needed to throw nonstop punches like he used to be able to do in his prime.