I for one am very happy that this fight is taking place, two world class guys both worthy of world title shots on the basis of their last valiant effort, but who comes through.
Both fighters have so many question marks it makes the fight very intriguing.
Chi's question marks are raised due to the fact he's only faught 1 named fighter (a tremendous fighter). I remeber thinking that Chi was just a mandatory with a bulked up record who Morales would eat up. Wrong!
It was a close contest and chi came very close to being one of (maybe the only) person to geniunely put Morales down (I don't count the KD in the 12th in the first fight with Barrera). He was still punching into the 12th and it was one of the best fights of the millenium.
However, Chi's activity has been poor since, and Morales was going through a very rough patch in his career. Remember he was gifted two decisions vs Barrera and Espedas in the fights before his battle with Chi. Espedas is fighter who's not in Brodies class, losing a few fights after to a journeyman and was involved in one of the worse major contests of this millenium against Bone Adams, in which both fighter looked finished. To say that the Morales/Espedas rematch is not anticipated is an understatment.
So did Morales's shaky patch (maybe due to motivation difficulties) flatter Chi a bit?? Quite possibly.
Brodie skill wise is up there amongst the top 5 or 6 in the devision (and this devision is red hot at the moment with 4 good champions). However question marks arise about his ability to absorb punishment in this devision and also with cuts. He's gone down a few times already as a feather and he hasn't stepped up to top ten level in this devision yet. Paul Ingle was a guy who seemed like he could take a punch when up against the Billy Hardy's of this world, however he was KD (and hurt) in all four of his world title fights. Chi could hurt Morales, but hasn't got a great punchers record. So can Chi hurt and KO Mikey?
The cuts is another issue for Brodie, Chi's busy style throwing lots of punches will make it hard for Mikey not to get some damage, he boxed brilliantly against Molina (British performance of the year??) but that was Molina who was limited, Can Chi bust him up.
So what will happen in this fight. I think its possibly the most winnable fight for Brodie for a major belt (even more winnable than Medina), he's got the skills to do it and deserves to win the belt. However, while I think if facially he can hold up he'll win a unaminous decision, something tells me that when on the verge of winning Brodie's face will go with Chi been declared the winner on a technixally somewhere between 8 and 10.
I don't know why but when I see Brilliant Brodie displays I keep thinking back to Billy Schwer (perhaps the WBF/IBO is the best belt he'll hold) both deserved more, but nice guys never seem to win in this business.
