By Dan Ambrose: Erik Morales (51-6, 35 KO’s) isn’t intimidated in the least by the power of the hard-hitting Argentinean knockout artist Marcos Maidana (29-2, 27 KO’s), who the 34-year-old Morales will be facing on Saturday night in an HBO pay-per-view fight at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Morales figures he’s been there before and faced better opposition than what he’ll be seeing across from him on Saturday night with the powerful Maidana. That maybe so, but that’s not stopping the sports bettors from installing Maidana as a 6-1 favorite in this fight to beat Morales.

The things that Morales has going against him is his age, his inactivity and the fact that he’s fighting two divisions above his last effective fighting weight. Morales spent most of his career at super featherweight and only moved up to featherweight. He moved up to lightweight during his four fight losing streak. Now he’s fighting at light welterweight and facing his first real test in this weight class after struggling to beat three B level fighters.

Morales said this in an article at the Los Angeles Times: “Everybody says Maidana hits too hard. I don’t believe that. I can handle him.”

Morales couldn’t handle David Diaz in 2007, losing by a 12 round decision and getting pretty badly bruised up in defeat. Maidana appears to hit a lot harder than Diaz. It’s scary to think what Maidana will do to Morales’ face unless Morales becomes a runner and stays away from Maidana for most of the fight.

WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan was able to go 12 rounds with Maidana by running and holding. However, even Khan eventually couldn’t run anymore when Maidana finally caught up to him and hurt him in the 10th. The last three rounds of that fight saw Maidana teeing off on Khan in three one-sided rounds.

Morales isn’t as big as Khan and doesn’t as well as him. Morales may have no other choice but to fight Maidana if he doesn’t want to run out of gas quickly from running around the ring. Morales isn’t suited for running and he’ll only make things more difficult for himself should he decide to follow the Khan blueprint to try and beat Maidana.