By Dan Ambrose: According to an interview of Juan Manuel Marquez at Record.com.mx, he believes that the 35-year-old Erik Morales (52-8, 36 KO’s) can return to top form for his career. Marquez blames Morales’ poor performance in his 12 round unanimous decision loss to Danny Garcia last Saturday on the combination of Morales having come off of recent gallbladder surgery in addition coming into the fight overweight.

Marquez has a point about both of these things. Morales clearly looked overweight for the fight with fat hanging from his sides of his waist. He also seemed very stiff in the upper body, as if he couldn’t bend properly at the waist. That could be from fat, the affects of surgery his body having aged. Morales hasn’t looked flexible in any of his fights since his comeback in 2010 following a three year retirement. Compared to how Morales looked in his last fight before his retirement, a loss against David Diaz, Morales looks very stiff in the upper body. He gained a considerable amount of weight after retiring, reportedly weighing close to 200lbs at one time.

Morales was fighting in the lightweight division at the time he retired and was in pretty good shape except that he had been draining himself to make the weight. He didn’t have the fat hanging off of his sides like he’s had since he’s made his comeback. That fat is probably here to stay and something Morales won’t be able to take off no matter how hard he works on his conditioning.

I don’t know that Morales can return to form to pick up a title at light welterweight. He doesn’t look strong at this weight and his best power shots don’t have any effect in this weight class. His jab is good for this weight but his power isn’t there. I don’t think it’s realistic for Morales to get down to lightweight and super featherweight again, but those are the weight class he needs to be fighting at if he wants to find success. If Morales could find a way to slowly take off the weight without draining himself, he would be dangerous at featherweight and super bantamweight. It’s probably not possible for Morales to get back down to those weight classes unless he had ironclad discipline and a great nutritionist and exercise coach.