Crolla given big fight with Erik Morales on September 17th

By Boxing News - 07/05/2011 - Comments

By Sean McDaniel: British lightweight champion Anthony Crolla (21-2, 9 Ko’s) has been given a huge fight against 34-year-old former three time world champion Erik Morales (51-7, 35 KO’s) on September 17th at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Crolla, 24, is 10 years younger than Morales and has lot more time left in his career than Morales does with what’s left of his.

This is great fight for Crolla, who has won eight consecutive fights since losing to Gary Sykes in 2009. Crolla has a youthful all action style of fighting that could give Morales a lot of problems in this fight. It’s doubtful that Crolla will be given a decision against Morales unless he does something extraordinary like knocking Morales down four or five times. Minus that, Crolla will likely lose to Morales.

The thing is it’s not that Crolla doesn’t have the skills to beat Morales but rather he’s nowhere near as popular, and we’ve seen in the boxing world in a lot of cases it’s difficult for little known fighters to get a decision over the more popular guy.

Morales lost his last fight to Marcos Maidana in a close 12 round majority decision loss in April. Morales fought well, good enough to lose by a narrow margin. However, he was outworked in that fight by a slow fighter with overrated power. Crolla has a much better work rate than Maidana and a lot better hand speed. The only question that we do have about Crolla is his ability to take punishment. He’s going to get hit harder by Morales than he’s been hit thus far as a pro in the UK. Morales may be partially shot but he’s still a step above the guys that Crolla has been fighting.



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