ERIK MORALES is “focused and wired” for his January 21 rematch with Filipino boxing icon Manny Pacquiao at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to a boxing website Thursday.
Morales, a three-time former world champion, told fightnews.com that his training camp in the mountains of Mexico, his first under new trainer Jose Luis “Maestro” Lopez Jr., is “one of the best I’ve had.”
“El Terrible” added he is expecting super featherweight contender Steven Luevano to spar with him “any day” while he hones his skills with former world champions Freddie Norwood and Daniel Atah.
Morales, who posted his 48th career victory against 3 losses when he subdued Pacquiao (40-3-2 with 31 knockouts) in their March 19, 2005 encounter at the MGM Grand Hotel also in Las Vegas, is looking to redeem himself from a lackluster loss to Zahir Raheem.
That defeat at the lightweight level to the former US Olympian on September 10 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles forced Morales to drop back to the 130-pound class and replace his father-trainer Jose with Lopez, who put the Mexican in great shape again.
But Pacquiao, coming off a sound 6th-round knockout of Morales’ compatriot Hector Velazquez also on that September fight card, vowed in a press conference Wednesday that the outcome of their rematch would be in his favor.
“PacMan,” who will stake his World Boxing Council International super featherweight title against Morales, hopes to exact revenge over “El Terrible” and set up a dream return bout with Marco Antonio Barrera—the current WBC and International Boxing Federation 130-lb kingpin whom he defeated in November 2003.
The WBC has decreed that the winner of the second Pacquiao-Morales tiff will become the No. 1 contender to Barrera. The boxing body also voted their first fight as the most dramatic for 2005 at its recent convention at its Mexico City headquarters.
The bout was remembered for the sustained aggression of Morales and Pacquiao, who fought with everything they had.
Pacquiao lost a unanimous decision but many in the crowd and the millions who watched the encounter on television felt it would have had a different ending if the Filipino icon not suffered an accidental head butt in the fifth round.
