Step Up to the Scratch: Featuring Erik Morales, Chris John and David Tua

The plan is for "Step Up to the Scratch" to become a weekly roundup of what fights have been announced or what fights have been signed. We start the first installment off with some interesting fights being kicked around.

The most interesting fight being announced during the week is the Erik Morales-Jorge Barrios fight. This is a interesting step up for the aging Morales.

It appears that this bout will take place at 138 which is above both men’s ideal weight, but Morales (50-6, 35 KO) is doing the smart thing by working down to lightweight instead of jumping right into it.

The idea is to get him down to 135 pounds and fight Juan Manuel Marquez in early 2011.

He returned after his three-year retirement fighting as a blown-up welterweight by beating Jose Alfaro, then moved down to beat Willie Limond with a knockout in the sixth round.

In that fight, he won the utterly meaningless WBC silver light welterweight title even though the reported weight for the fight was 141 and both weighed in at a reportedly 143 pounds.

At any rate, the silver title will be on the line against Barrios (50-4-1, 35 KO) who is a dangerous opponent, but both fighters are fighting above their best weight so a weight advantage goes to neither.

Barrios is a rough fighter from Argentina and was last seen in the States losing to Rocky Juarez. He had some legal trouble in Argentina when he accidentally killed a pregnant woman.

Since then he is 3-0 with one knockout against marginal opponents. He is a very live opponent for Morales and you have to give him credit for making this fight instead of going the safe route here.

If nothing else we will see what the chin of Morales has left. Barrios isn’t a knockout artist but he has a ton more power than Alfaro and Limond had. They were feather-fisted and you cant deny it.

This fight will take place in Tijuana.

According to Notifight a title bout between long time featherweight king Chris John (43-0-2, 22 KO) and totally undeserving challenger Fernando Saucedo (38-3-1, 1 KO) in Bali, Indonesia on Dec. 1.

You read that right, Saucedo has one, count 'em, one knockout victory in his 38 wins. He has no power and has lost every time he has stepped up in competition.

He has only fought outside of his home country of Argentina four times and is 1-1-1 but this is his first outside of Argentina since being beaten badly by Acelino “Popo” Freitas in Brazil.

It looked like John was going to make a run against good fighters after fight Rocky Juarez in back to back fights and coming out of those 1-0-1 (should have been 2-0).

It gets John back in the ring after a year layoff and hopefully he is shaking off some ring rust before fighting bigger names. Well, we can all hope can’t we.

The last two fights are interesting to me because I am a fan of David Tua and who really wants to see this rematch?

Tua and Monte Barrett will co-headline a card in Aruba against opponents yet to be named. It appears that if they both win they will fight each other in a rematch of their draw which saw Tua go down for the first time in his career.

I love Tua but this isn’t getting him closer to a title fight and he isn’t getting any younger. If anything it gives Barrett a chance for a upset and possibly another big payday.

This was originally written for and posted on www.kissingthecanvas.com.