By Jason Kim: Erik Morales (51-6, 35 KO’s) is giving himself an excellent chance of beating knockout artist Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s) on April 9th in their fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

One of the things that Morales is looking at to suggest that he’ll win is Maidana’s power. Morales doubts whether Maidana punches as hard as his old nemesis Pacquiao, who beat Morales in two of the three times they fought. Morales said “Do you think he [Maidana] hits harder than Pacquiao, for instance?”

Maidana may or may not hit as hard as Pacquiao with his best shot. It’s hard to tell, but the difference here is that Maidana has very heavy hands and hits hard with every punch he throws. It’s like he’s hitting you with a power punch when he’s just throwing normal shots.

He tends to wear down his opposition rather than blasting them out with one shot. Getting hit really hard over and over again is difficult for fighters to take. Maidana just ends up bludgeoning his opponents into submission over a period of rounds. Morales is going to find out that Maidana has a different kind of power compared to Pacquiao.

It might not be the same as the Filipino fighter in terms of a single shot, but he’s going to be hitting Morales a lot in this fight and it’s difficult to imagine that he’s going to be able to stand up to that kind of heavyweight punishment for 12 rounds.

Morales says “I think that his style is very good for my style…I think I can adjust very well to his style. I’ve seen him and I feel very confident that it’s the fight style for my style.”

In his prime, Morales might well have been good enough to beat Maidana if he were big enough to fight him. However, Morales has fought at lighter weights and he’s not the same fighter he once was. In his prime, he would have been asking a lot of himself to bulk up enough to beat a bigger, stronger fighter like Maidana. But now that Morales is old and looking shot, it’s even harder for him to beat him now.

Morales is fighting out of his weight class against one of the biggest punchers in the light welterweight division. And on top of that, Morales has struggled against the three mediocre opponents he’s been in with during his three fight comeback. Maidana is a lot better than the three guys that Morales has faced. This means that Morales is going to have to be a lot better than he was in those three fights if he wants to beat Morales on 4/9.