By Dan Ambrose: The once promising junior middleweight prospect James Kirkland (27-1, 24 KO’s) is reportedly back with his old trainer Ann Wolf and looking to fight 37-year-old Ricardo Mayorga (29-8-1, 23 KO’s) next. Kirkland, 27, looked horrible in his last fight in April, getting stopped in the 1st round by a fast but light hitting Nobuhiro Ishida. Kirkland was flabby looking in the fight and ended up getting knocked down three times before referee Joe Cortez dove on Kirkland while he was on the canvas to prevent him from getting up yet again to continue fighting.

Wolf, an excellent trainer, had Kirkland looking sharp in the past up until Kirkland went to prison for a year for a weapons violation in 2009. Now that he’s out, he perhaps needed more time to get the rust off before putting him in with a quality fighter like Ishida.

Kirkland may be in for another bad experience if Mayorga does turn out to be his next opponent, as Mayorga is a better puncher than Ishida and if he has an opponent that comes straight at him like Kirkland typically does in his fights, Mayorga can be lethal. Kirkland’s conditioning wasn’t the reason why Ishida took him out in April; it was because of Kirkland’s shaky chin. He had chin problems before he went to prison and it looks like the time in the joint hasn’t helped his beard any.

If Kirkland wants to be successful, he may need to change his wide open attacking style and be more cautious. He can’t fight like Mike Tyson if he doesn’t have a strong chin. At the same time, Kirkland’s power, while good, isn’t devastating. He’s got decent power and needs to land a lot of punches to get his opponents out of there. Unfortunately, Kirkland is going to get hit a lot while in the process of shooting for his knockouts unless he changes his game.

Mayorga will mow him down if Kirkland doesn’t protect his chin. Mayorga is coming off a 12th round knockout loss to Miguel Cotto in March. Mayorga gave Cotto a lot of problems in that fight, forcing him to basically run. It would have been interesting to see if Cotto could have hung with Mayorga if he had elected to slug it out with him.