Morales-Garcia and Kirkland-Molina this Saturday night

By Boxing News - 03/18/2012 - Comments

Image: Morales-Garcia and Kirkland-Molina this Saturday nightBy Jim Dower: This Saturday night WBC light weight champion Erik Morales (52-7, 36 KO’s) defends his title against undefeated challenger Danny Garcia (22-0, 14 KO’s) in an HBO televised fight from the Reliant Arena, in Houston, Texas. In addition to this fight, James Kirkland (30-1, 27 KO’s) will be fighting Carlos Molina (19-4-2, 6 KO’s) in a strange semi-final WBC eliminator junior middleweight bout with the winner facing undefeated Vanes Martirosyan in the final World Boxing Council eliminator fight.

Morales, 35, has a lot of interesting fights ahead of him if he can somehow get past the 23-year-old Garcia, but it’s going to be tough because the former four division world champion Morales has struggled at 140 unlike in the lower divisions, and he’s not looked anything close to being the same fighter he once was in his prime. However, he’s got an advantage in this fight because Garcia is good fighter but beatable. It’s just that he might not be beatable for aging fighter like Morales, who is fighting several divisions above his best weight class. Garcia has beaten some good fighters in the past with wins over Kendall Holt, Mike Arnaoutis, Nate Campbell, Christopher Fernandez and Ashley Theophane.

Morales is going to have to bring his A-game for him to beat Garcia, because he’s got a lot of different advantages over Morales in this fight. A prime Morales obviously would take Garcia if they could have met at a similar weight class, but Morales might be too old now.

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Kirkland, 26, is trying to keep up the momentum from his 6th round TKO win over Alfredo Angulo last November. The first round of their fight was one of the most exciting rounds of 2011 with both fighters hitting the deck. Kirkland got up from his knockdown and recovered almost immediately, but Angulo was hurt and seemed to have exhausted himself in the process of trying to score a stoppage of Kirkland after hurting him.

The 28-year-old Molina will be a tough test or Kirkland because he’s got really good skills and will keep coming forward all night long to punish him. Molina won’t gas out like Angulo so Kirkland is going to have to take some really big shots in this fight and that could be a problem for Kirkland because his chin isn’t one of the best.

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Former two-time WBC lightweight champion Jose Luis Casillo (63-11-1, 54 KO’s) will be fighting on the card against 34-year-old Jose Miguel Cotto (32-3-1, 24 KO’s) in a 10 round bout. It’s hard to see either of these guys as welterweights because they’re both so small. Cotto, the brother of WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto, is only 5’5 1/2″, whereas Castillo is 5’8″, but with a small frame. Castillo has lost two out of his last five fights.



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