(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) By Allan Fox: Erik Morales (52-9, 36 KO’s) took yet another loss last Saturday night in losing to WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (25-0, 16 KO’s) by an embarrassing 4th round knockout at the Barclay’s Center, in Brooklyn, New York. The loss was the third in the last four fights for Morales and it’s now more than ever clear that the 36-year-old former four division world champion needs to hang up his gloves so that he doesn’t taint his legacy further.

Morales reportedly will be fighting once before he retires. Morales wants to end his career with a final fight in Mexico. It’s unclear who he’ll be fighting, but it’s pretty obvious that he needs to fight some a little lower ranked than the guys he’s been fighting recently. Morales has now lost twice to Danny Garcia and once to Marcos Maidana. Morales did do a good job of beating Pablo Cesar Cano last year, but he still took an awful lot of punishment in winning that fight.

An ideal opponent for Morales would be someone like Humberto Soto or Michael Katsidis. Those are winnable fights for him, but definitely tough ones to go out. I don’t know that Morales wants to end his career against an easy scrub opponent when he’s still got enough in the tank to beat at least a decent light welterweight fringe level contender. Morales just needs to avoid fighting someone with the kind of big power that Garcia and Maidana has. Morales doesn’t have the legitimate size or the youth to be fighting guys that can bang like that.

In hindsight, it wasn’t a good idea for Morales to push for the Garcia rematch. He was beaten badly in the first fight, and there wasn’t a good reason for him to take the second fight. If Morales didn’t need the money, then he should have taken another option. Supposedly, Morales is already set for life and doesn’t need to fight for money, but it makes you wonder why he chose to make his comeback in the first place when he ended his career with four losses in his last five fights in 2007. It was pretty obvious that Morales wasn’t the same fighter that he once was at the time he retired.