One of the greatest fights in recent boxing history was eclipsed on Saturday when Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales put on yet another memorable brawl.
The Mexican boxing legends traded punishing shots from the first bell to the last, thrilling a roaring crowd of 11,162 at the MGM Grand with the fight of a lifetime. By the slimmest margin, Barrera pulled out a majority decision victory in the rivals’ rubber match, getting the nod only when judge Larry O’Connell called the 11th round even.
O’Connell had Barrera ahead 115-114. Jerry Roth favored Barrera 115-113, while Paul Smith scored it 114-114. Both Roth and Smith gave the 11th to Morales, but O’Connell scored it even, turning it from a draw into a Barrera victory.
The victory gave Barrera the WBC super featherweight championship and ended his archrival’s hopes to become the Fighter of the Year. But the bout clearly became the front-runner not only for Fight of the Year, but one of the great matches in the sport’s history.
The pair fought an epic match in 2000 in which Morales pulled out a controversial decision in a bout voted Fight of the Year. Barrera evened the ledger by slipping past Morales in their 2002 rematch and on Saturday got the last laugh in one of boxing’s great rivalries with a spirited victory.
“The plan was to box and move and to be swift, because we know he’s a hard puncher,” Barrera said.
Barrera, though, was doling out punishing shots of his own. He went off as a 3-1 underdog, but made a statement in the first round by attacking Morales at the bell and ripping him with punishing uppercuts, short hooks and powerful straight rights.
Barrera landed a right hand early that backed Morales into a corner and then cracked him with an uppercut that may have broken Morales’ nose. Morales bled from the nose for much of the fight and conceded he had difficulty breathing because of it.
“I was tight early,” Morales said. “I couldn’t get my jab off and I didn’t really feel I was into the fight until the fourth or fifth round. I gave away too many of the early rounds. When you lose, you lose. My body didn’t respond the way it’s supposed to.”
Morales hit Barrera with a right-left combination to start the second round, bringing the large pro-Morales crowd to life. Morales ducked under a Barrera jab with about 45 seconds to go in the round and blistered Barrera with a wicked right.
Barrera, as he did all night, not only took the punch well but came back with one of his own. He landed a left after the Morales right that backed up Morales and sent a message it wasn’t going to be easy.
A year ago, Barrera was overwhelmed by Manny Pacquiao, a much smaller man, who beat him up badly and stopped him in the 11th. Many saw that as the start of his professional decline, but Barrera insisted it was an aberration. He was distracted by the 2003 California wildfires that forced him to break his training camp in Big Bear Lake, Calif., and by the revelation that he had had brain surgery in 1997, which he had previously failed to disclose.
But he fought like with passion Saturday, never allowing Morales to bully him or have extended one-sided rallies.
“As I said before, the Pacquiao fight was a tough night and there were a lot of things involved that went into it,” Barrera said.
The final two rounds were classics, particularly the 11th, as they stood in front of each other and landed shots that seemed sure to knock down one or the other down. But neither man would take a backward step, though the consequences of that decision showed on Morales’ face. Both of his eyes were badly swollen, he was bleeding from the mouse and the nose, and his right eye was blackened.
“I thought he might have given me a few fouls, a few illegal blows, but that’s part of boxing,” a disappointed Morales said. “It was a very close fight.”
