Kirkland-Molina, Morales-Garcia card postponed due to Morales’ surgery; Feb or March possible as new fight date

By Boxing News - 12/27/2011 - Comments

Image: Kirkland-Molina, Morales-Garcia card postponed due to Morales' surgery; Feb or March possible as new fight dateBy Dan Ambrose: The January 28th fight card headlined by WBC light welterweight champion Erik Morales vs. Danny Garcia has now been officially shelved, according to ESPN. It was already announced that the Morales-Garcia fight had been canceled due to the 35-year-old Morales’ recent gallbladder surgery.

However, there were still hopes of saving the card, which had James Kirkland vs. Carlos Molina as the co-feature bout, but Golden Boy Promotions decided to instead to postpone the entire card until February or March 2012. The Kirkland-Molina and Morales-Garcia fights will still go ahead as planned but a new date will be found for early next year.

Morales still needs time for his surgical incision to heal, and this way there he won’t be rushed back in action too early. It also makes things easier on Golden Boy, who would have had to dig up a high quality fighter to replace the Morales vs. Garcia fight on January 28th and that would have proved very difficult for them to do on this short notice.

Morales’ gallstone problem hit him all of a sudden last week and made it necessary for him to be rushed to emergency surgery.

Morales recently captured the vacant World Boxing Council belt last September with a win over #12 ranked Pablo Cesar Cano. It was perhaps just dumb luck that Morales was able to fight the inexperienced 22-year-old Cano instead of a better opponent, because Morales was supposed to have fought Lucas Matthysse but he become ill the week before the fight. Cano was then pulled from near the bottom of the top 15, and Morales was able to beat him to win the vacant title. Had Morales fought Matthysse, he likely would have lost and none of this would matter now. It was a stroke of luck for Morales that Matthysse pulled out.

Morales will likely run out of luck when he does eventually defend his title against the 23-year-old Garcia, because this guy is bigger, faster and stronger than Morales. It could turn out to be a real mismatch. The gallbladder surgery and the postponement has perhaps artificially prolonged Morales’ time as the WBC champion, but he’ll still likely lose the belt in his next fight none the less.



Comments are closed.