On September 10th at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Erik Morales (48-2, 34 KOs) takes on Zahir Raheem (26-1,16 KOs), and Manny Pacquiao(39-3-2, 30 KOs) faces Hector Velasquez (42-10-2, 31 KO’s) in a nationally televised doubleheader.
If both Morales and Pacquiao come out victorious, it will pave the way for a rematch of their thrilling March shootout that was won by ‘El Terrible’.
Morales has made a habit of taking on only the sport’s biggest names. But he’s also made a habit of fighting up – or down – to his level of competition.
“If you put him against a taxi driver tomorrow, he’ll make a tough fight out of that,” joked his manager, Fernando Beltran. “He don’t know how to make easy fights. He just loves to be in wars.”
Will Morales have a tough time getting up for Raheem, coming off his bout with Pacquiao in March, while looking ahead to another bout with the Filipino icon in the winter?
“No,” insisted Morales, through Top Rank publicist Ricardo Jimenez. “I respect him a lot. I think he poses problems for me so I have to be really ready for him. He does a lot of things I rarely face. So I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
His scouting report of Raheem reads thusly: “I know he’s a fast boxer, a lot of movement, he’s got a lot of amateur experience. So I expect him to be a good boxer.”
The bout with Pacquiao was another vintage Morales slugfest, the kind that would affect other fighters adversely for years. For the Tijuana tough guy, it was just another day at the office.
“I don’t think it was that draining,” he insisted. “I thought it was just a real, normal, tough fight with a guy that was moving, I was moving, doing a lot of things inside the ring. But I recuperated real fast. I was ready to go.”
For Raheem, whose shot at upsetting Rocky Juarez last summer was taken away from him by the ridiculously biased refereeing of Robert Gonzalez, this is the chance of a lifetime.
“Oh, of course, I mean this is what every fighter asks for. This is a career defining fight, not just because it’s a world title fight, but because of who Erik Morales is,” said the representative of the 1996 US Olympic boxing team. No major titles are actually at stake, but by downing Morales, Raheem would suddenly become a player in the fertile 130-pound division. “He’s a legend, an icon, he’s paid his dues in boxing, just as well as I have,” Raheem said of Morales. “The difference is, he has a name, sells millions of tickets and this is my opportunity.”
Raheem believes being the ‘sandwich fight’ in between Pacquiao is the ideal situation for him to sneak up on Morales and play the role of spoiler.
“That’s a tremendous situation and I love being the underdog. Because that’s what makes fighters great, when they overcome obstacles and they do things nobody believed you can do.”
After campaigning most of his career around 126 pounds, the native of Philly is more than glad to make the move up.
“I don’t know how his body is, it’s better for me than it is at ’26,” he says of his move to jr. lightweight. “At 126, when I fought Juarez, I just killed myself. I basically drained myself to where I had nothing going into the ring and still put on a great performance.
“I got gas in the tank, so I’m going to be ready to blast from opening to closing.”
Neither Pacquiao or Velasquez attended Wednesday afternoon’s press conference at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but Pacquiao was represented by his attorneys Keith Davidson and Nick Khan.
Khan says that his client is finally of sound body and mind after freeing himself from his former promoter, Murad Muhammad.
“I think he’s 100-percent of clear mind,” stated Khan. “He finished filming a movie last week so that was the last distraction. He’ll be back on Monday, August 1st, 100-percent clear of mind and looking to the fight with Velasquez.”
There was some thought in the Pacquiao camp of moving his training to Arizona to have less distractions on a day to day basis while he’s preparing for his fights but eventually it was decided that it would have been too much of a logistical hassle to have his trainer, Freddie Roach, migrate with his other boxers.
Khan says that a security guard will now be in charge of making sure that the ‘Wild Card Boxing Club’ will not be an open house, like it was in the past, while the ‘Pac Man’ plies his trade.
And the dog-and-pony shows were not limited to the gym, according to Khan.
“Not to take anything away from Erik Morales, who performed remarkably in his last fight, but the distractions were overwhelming,” he explained. “So much so that the day before the fight Pacquiao had no sleep. People from his former team were constantly bringing in luminaries from the Philippines to see him and meet him and it just wasn’t a good environment for a fighter who needs to be at peace.”
If both Morales and Pacquiao both win at the Staples Center, they will have a sequel of their first bout, which is perhaps the best fight of the year that didn’t involve Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo.
But it’s not clear just when they will get it on again. December 10th was thought to be the working date of the rematch, but that’s changed with Taylor-Hopkins II now taking place on December 3rd.
“We have December 10th, if Hopkins and Taylor want to fight December 3rd, HBO’s asked us if we would move into January and that depends on if all the parties agree: Morales, Beltran, Finkel,” explained Bob Arum, who is promoting this matchup. “From my standpoint, I have no problem accommodating everybody. I was never thrilled with December, it’s a month later, it’s no big deal. January’s a good month. I know the hotels are just as interested in January as December and I can’t see the pay-per-view being adversely affected if it was January. So I have no objection, but I’m just one person, I want to emphasize that.”
UNDERCARD
Also on that card at the Staples Center is Brian Viloria’s challenge for the WBC junior flyweight title held by Eric Ortiz. There was a chance that this bout, which was originally slated for the aborted ‘Million Dollar Lady’ card on July 30th at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, was going to be rescheduled for August 26th on Telefutura. But Viloria’s manager opted to fight for the title in an untelevised setting before the cameras of HBO get rolling.
Why?
“My thinking, quite frankly, is that the Telefutura show is in Laredo, Texas. It’s a show that might as well be in Mexico,” Gittelsohn explained. “I’ve had the experience in the past of bringing a non-Hispanic fighter to a show in south Texas – specifically it was Clarence Vinson, who got a really raw deal in Texas on a HBO Latino show. It would be preferable where I could fight Brian where I didn’t have to worry about the partisanship of the judges.”
MY APOLOGY
I’ve gotten e-mails from all the hockey fans out there who were a bit offended by a recent column where I stated nobody cares about the NHL or hockey in general.
To those four, I sincerely apologize.
I’ll put myself in the penalty box.
