By Eric Thomas: Former three time world champion Erik Morales (51-7, 35 KO’s) came up short on Saturday night in trying to capture the interim WBA light welterweight crown against knockout artist Marcos Maidana (30-2, 27 KO’s) at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Morales, 34, ended up losing by a majority decision to Maidana by the scores of 114-114, 116-112 and 116-112. However, Morales feels that he should have won the fight, saying “I want a rematch. I thought I won. I’m better than him.” Maidana then walked up to Morales and said “A rematch can be anytime; tomorrow even.”
Morales fought hard but he clearly came up short in this fight. Perhaps it was because of his badly swollen up right eye, which completely shut by the 2nd round of action. Morales did well in three rounds – the 5th, 8th and 10th. In the other rounds, he was out-worked, out-landed and hit with the harder shots. Like Amir Khan, Morales had a way of throwing flurries at times, usually near the end of the round, which may have had the effect of impressing the judges and making them forget what Maidana had done in the majority of the round.
Morales didn’t throw enough punches on a consistent basis unfortunately and a lot of his flurries consisted of punches that failed to land. Maidana simply out-worked Morales and landed the harder shots throughout. Morales appeared to lose the first four rounds of the fight. He came on in the 5th, but then failed to do enough in the 6th and 7th. After winning the 8th, Morales again did little in the next round in the 9th as Maidana came on. Morales fought well for the vast majority of the 10th, but in the last 45 seconds of the round, Maidana came storming back and appeared to slightly hurt Morales with some looping shots.
That was pretty much it for Morales at that point, because he was badly out-worked in the 11th and 12th rounds and ended up losing the fight. I had Maidana winning by eight rounds to three. I couldn’t give anymore than three rounds to Morales because he wasn’t working hard enough to win the other rounds and his late flurries weren’t enough to overcome all the work that Maidana had done previous to that. Morales fought well, but just well enough to win. I can’t see a rematch being any different. Morales just doesn’t punch hard enough on a consistent basis and will get outworked again if he fights Maidana. Whether this fight happens again or not will likely be up to HBO. If they want to show the rematch, then we’ll likely get a rematch. However, Maidana has bigger fish to fry than beating Morales again. HBO might want to hold off on a Morales-Maidana rematch in order to let Maidana fight someone like the Devon Alexander vs. Lucas Matthysse winner. That seems like a much better option than to have Maidana fight Morales again and beat him once more.
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