THE HEAT is on, and for sure, Manny Pacquiao won’t take Erik Morales’ insult sitting down.
Morales said he won’t take a backward step and it will be Pacquiao who is going to do a lot of running when they cross paths again on Jan. 21, 2006 at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, the Mexican counter-puncher said.
“Whenever I attacked him, he went backward and he didn’t know what to do,” Morales told the leafing website fightnews.com over the weekend during an interview at the Wynn Resort and Casino.
“I don’t think he’s going to learn how to do it any better than from the first time. His problem is not going forward because he is good coming forward. But his problem is going backward and that is what I will do (make him back up),” said Morales, who beat the Filipino on a unanimous decision the first time they locked horns early this year at the MGM Grand.
Morales said one thing that he realized during the first fight is that “this guy wasn’t really that strong and he didn’t have the kind of punch to knock me out.”
In preparation for the first megabuck bout of 2006, Pacquiao said he will work on the other facet of his game.
“I have to learn to fight from a distance,” said Pacquiao, who was joined in the interview by his trainer Freddie Roach and promoter Gary Shaw.
Even the issue of what brand of gloves to wear has been ironed out with Morales wearing the Japanese-brand Winning and Pacquiao using the Mexican-made Cleto Reyes, reputedly a puncher’s glove.
In the first fight, Pacquiao was compelled to use Winning as per the contract agreement that his former promoter Murad Muhammad signed.
“Manny will be using his gloves that he likes (Reyes). He likes Winning because they are much bigger and they can protect his face much better when he puts his hands up and they also protect the hands more, I guess. It’s hard to get through the bigger gloves, also,” said Roach.
