By Dan Ambrose: 34-year-old Erik Morales (51-7, 35 KO’s) is fighting for the vacant WBC light welterweight title on September 17th against the number #7 ranked WBC contender Lucas Matthysse (28-2, 26 KO’s) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. In looking at how mediocre Morales has looked since staging his comeback in in 2010, it’s incredible how Morales was given the chance to fight for the vacant World Boxing Council title.

However, this seems to be one of those cases where an old fighter with a name is given a golden opportunity to fight for a title. We’ve seen this happen over and over again in boxing. Now it’s Morales’ turn. Morales lost his last fight against Marcos Maidana last April in a 12 round decision loss for the interim WBC light welterweight belt, but is now being given another chance to win a title.

Morales said this about the Matthysse fight: “I am crazy about what I do…I am going to do whatever I have to do to win…I’ll fight for the Mexican people and be champion again.”

The chances aren’t good that Morales will win this fight, because he’s taking on a young fighter with excellent power and good skills. Morales looked to be only capable of fighting in short bursts in his loss to Maidana, and that was against a slow opponent with limited stamina. Matthysse is a better conditioned fighter with a faster hands and with a better workrate.

This is going to be a very difficult fight for Morales to win unless he’s able to fight on a higher level than what he’s been showing as of late. Morales has the boxing knowledge to win this fight but not the size or the youth to accomplish it. Matthysse will have to be really off for Morales to win this fight unless we’re dealing with Matthysse getting beat by another controversial decision.