By Dan Ambrose: If you looked at how truly awful 35-year-old Erik Morales (52-7, 36 KO’s) looked last September in capturing the vacant World Boxing Council (WBC) light welterweight title against 22-year-old fringe contender Pablo Cesar Cano you would know how precarious Morales’ position is as the new champion going into his fight next month on January 28th against 23-year-old #2 ranked Danny Garcia (22-0, 14 KO’s) in a fight that will be taking place at the Reliant Arena in Houston, Texas.

This is a young man’s sport and Morales is really fighting on borrowed time and unlike the ageless Bernard Hopkins, Morales doesn’t look eternally young at 35. He’s facing a taller, younger and arguably stronger Garcia next month and I don’t think is going to be end well for Morales.

While some boxing fans think he can still do given his close 12 round decision loss to Marcos Maidana last April, I’m not one of them. Maidana is a fighter without any hand speed whatsoever. Sure, he can punch hard but he’s very, very slow and by putting him in with a guy with a good chin like Morales, it was the perfect situation for him to fight in. But Garcia is a whole different matter. He’s got hand speed, height, reach, power and youth.

He’s got almost every advantage against Morales in this fight. It’s a credit to Morales that he didn’t duck the fight and go after some of the weak opponents that he was rumored to be looking to fight. But all the same, he’s in trouble here. Garcia has put together some impressive wins in the past year over Mike Arnaoutis, Nate Campbell and Kendall Holt. He’s looked good in each of the fights. Morales is going to have to find a way to keep Garcia off of him because he’s going to take a real pounding in this fight if he can’t get out of the way of his big shots.