By William Mackay: Kevin Mitchell (32-1, 24 KO’s) is riding high right now after his 8th round TKO win over John Murray last weekend at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. It was a good win for Mitchell with him coming off a year of inactivity and a knockout loss in his last fight against Michael Katsidis.

However, Mitchell needs to keep his feet on the ground here. He’s now talking about wanting to get back in the ring with Katsidis, who destroyed Mitchell in a third round knockout in May of last year. That’s a really bad idea. Beating a slow moving, slow punching, nearly defenseless fighter like Murray is one thing but beating someone with the speed and power of Katsidis is quite another thing.

There’s a class difference here. Katsidis is a good fighter that is a rung below the likes of Juan Diaz, whereas Mitchell and Murray are several runs below. We saw that with Mitchell’s fight against Katsidis and we saw how poorly Murray looked against Mitchell. For me, it didn’t take the loss to Mitchell for me to see how mediocre Murray was. I saw that just from looking at a handful of his fights. He looked like someone who had business being ranked in the top 10. His ranking looked dramatically inflated.

This is why I’m not excited by Mitchell’s win over him. Mitchell basically beat a 2nd tier fighter. I’d rather than Mitchell cut his teeth against a lower ranked lightweight contender like Gavin Rees rather than getting back in the ring with Katsidis and getting knocked out again. If Mitchell really wants to test himself, he needs to take on someone like David Diaz or John Molina.

I think those would be toss up fights because those guys are halfway decent and can punch. If Mitchell could run from them long enough, and I’m talking about running and not hitting, he could maybe survive to win decisions against them. But if Mitchell takes on Katsidis next, it’s going to be game over for Mitchell. Katsidis is a lot better than Mitchell and will knock him out 10 out of 10 times.