Before Manny Pacquiao stepped into the ring against Erik Morales last March, Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer, thought he had put together an excellent battle strategy for the Filipino super featherweight. Unfortunately, Roach never saw it materialize. Pacquiao fought the wrong fight, getting cut over his eye early in the match, and lost a 12-round unanimous decision. Pacquiao (40-3-2, 31 KOs) and Morales (48-3, 34 KOs) will meet in the rematch at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas on HBO Pay-Per-View on Saturday night.
This time Roach would like to see the real Pac Man, and not the imposter who showed up last March.
“He’s definitely capable of fighting a better fight than the last time,” Roach said by telephone from Las Vegas yesterday. “I was definitely disappointed in him that last time. You just can’t show up and expect to knock out Erik Morales, especially when Morales is up for the fight.
“Manny was looking to throw the 1-2 and then land that big punch. But Morales is a smart fighter. He’s seen that a million times. He just kept his hands up and blocked it all night. And he kept backing Manny up and had him with his back on the ropes. It doesn’t look good when you’re against the ropes and trying to fight off the ropes, I don’t care who you are.”
Pacquiao’s problems actually began long before the fight. Pacquiao had issues with his promoter, Murad Muhammad, whom he successfully sued to get out of his contract.
Five days before the match with Morales, Pacquiao discovered that Muhammad had negotiated away his right to wear his favorite boxing gloves, “Reyes” (puncher’s gloves) on the night of the fight. Instead Pacquiao had to wear Morales’ favorite brand of gloves, “Winning” (soft mitts).
“And Manny was supposed to have a big suite, but Murad took the big suite for himself and put Manny in a one-bedroom suite that Manny had to share with eight other people,” Roach said. “And he didn’t get his tickets (for family and friends) for the fight.”
So, Pacquiao’s head was not in the fight. Roach recalls that on fight night, Pacquiao was joking around in the dressing room – something he never does.
Pacquiao’s management problems are behind him and Roach said the fighter has been completely focused on preparing to beat Morales. To that end, Roach closed the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood to the public while Pacquiao trained.
The fight plan has been tweaked, but Roach believes Pacquiao has the natural ability to beat Morales, who is coming off a loss to Zahir Raheem. Raheem has given Pacquiao a perfect blueprint as to how to beat Morales.
“We’re working on boxing and we’re going to be smart about it,” Roach said. “A basic 1-2 is not going to work. Manny knows that now.”
Brain power
Junior bantamweight Kahren Harutyunyan (13-2-3, No KOs) meets Nonito Donaire (13-1, 8 KOs) in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime, Friday at 11 p.m. Harutyunyan is a student of the sweet science and a senior English major at UCLA.
“It really hurts me that boxers are perceived as uneducated people,” said Harutyunyan. “Because of fighters who have done stupid things in the past, there is this image of a boxer as a street fighter.”
Harutyunyan has no knockouts on his resume. Pity they won’t let him bring his thesaurus in the ring.
The undercard features a lightweight bout between two guys who don’t know nothing ’bout history, and don’t know much biology. But they’re pretty good at applied physics. Tyrone Harris (14-0, 12 KOs) takes on Israel Hernandez (11-1-1, 11 KOs).
