Many fights have the potential for action and drama but none more so than the meeting of Erik Morales and Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas on 19 March. This is one of the rare ones where you feel confident in saying that excitement is guaranteed. Mexico’s Morales takes pride in being involved in fights that thrill the fans. Pacquiao brings it, hard and fast, as he has done since starting his career as a light-flyweight a decade ago.
The match weight for the scheduled 12-rounder is the super featherweight limit of 130lbs (9st 4lbs), which gives an immediate advantage to Morales, who has boxed in this weight division four times and is perceived as the bigger, stronger man.
Morales’s advantage in size, though, can be neutralised by the Filipino’s speed. Morales is a couple of inches taller at 5ft 8ins but Pacquiao is the younger man by two years and might be the fresher fighter because he hasn’t been in as many wars as El Terrible.
The crowd at the MGM Grand casino hotel and TV viewers around the world (HBO PPV in America, Sky TV in Britain) won’t be taking their eyes off this one once the bell rings.
Fights such as this are what keep boxing alive at the event level. We have two boxers who come to fight, who are proud, passionate, courageous and have power, skills and resiliency, and few can have a clear picture who will win. At time of writing it was essentially even money in the betting, with Pacquiao a slight favourite, probably based on the respective performances of the two men against Marco Antonio Barrera.
And if you go purely by form, then you do indeed have to favour Pacquiao. He beat up Barrera in 11 rounds, whereas Morales is one win, two losses, in his three-fight series with his Mexican arch rival (and I am probably one of the few who thought that Barrera won all three fights).
If form was an entirely reliable guide — the way two men have performed against the same opponent — we would all be geniuses when it comes to picking winners. Of course, it isn’t that simple. I do believe Barrera when he says he wasn’t at his best when he fought Pacquiao (the distractions he had going into that bout are well chronicled).
The Barrera who faced Morales in their third meeting last November wasn’t the same man who caved in mentally against Pacquiao a year earlier, which is taking nothing away from the Filipino: Pacquiao was the underdog and nothing was handed to him — he had to make Barrera not want to be there.
If we leave aside the boxers’ respective fights with Barrera, we have a match that really is a toss-up.
Pacquiao showed his explosive qualities but also his limitations in the gruelling 12-round draw with Juan Manuel Marquez in this same ring last May.
Actually, Pacquiao came closer to winning that fight in the first round, when he had the featherweight champ down three times, than probably any of us realise. The Mexican writer Ramiro Gonzalez (La Opinion) told me in conversation at the last Barrera-Morales fight that he had asked Marquez about the opening round, and Marquez told him that when he was dropped for the third time he was in two minds about staying down but, with the count proceeding, said to himself (in so many words): “What the hell — I may as well get up.”
Had Marquez indeed stayed down, we would probably have been hailing Pacquiao as one of the all-time greats in the featherweight division. But Marquez, being the fighter he is, hauled himself to his feet. Then we saw the deficiencies in Pacquiao as he marched straight in, looking to load up on punches in a predictable way, and Marquez was able to counter him with stiff jabs and right hands down the middle and not only pull himself back into the fight but actually win it in the opinion of a lot of people (me among them), although the draw was probably a fair result.
If Pacquiao simply steams into Morales and tries to hit him with left hands he could be in big trouble because the Mexican fighter will drill him with counter punches much in the manner that Marquez did.
Although we know and love Morales for being involved in give and take fights, he does know how to box.
But knocking down Marquez three times in the opening round might not have been such a good thing for Pacquiao because, in today’s terminology, it took him out of his game plan. His whole focus became one of simply landing the big punch. Marquez, smart and resourceful, was able to see the missiles coming and even sense when the Filipino was about to launch them. As the old time British boxing insiders would put it, he was able to “read” Pacquiao. So, even though Marquez got hit by some hard punches, it was nothing like what he experienced in those first, harrowing, three minutes.
I think that Pacquiao will have learned from that fight. His Los Angeles trainer, Freddie Roach, is working on him boxing an altogether more versatile and well-rounded fight this time — like the one he waged against Barrera, in fact.
And the key for Pacquiao, as everyone knows, is to fight at such a fast pace and keep the punches flowing to such an extent that the more methodical Morales never has the chance to get settled.
For Morales, the opening rounds are going to be the most dangerous. He has been known to start a bit slowly (Barrera really rocked him in the first round last November and he had a wobbly beginning against Jesus Chavez in February of last year). He doesn’t want to get caught by surprise the way his compatriot, Marquez, was by Pacquiao’s opening assault.
Once Morales has got past the first two or three rounds, he should be able to start coming on with his own hammering deliveries, and if he catches Pacquiao he will hurt him.
If it gets to be the sort of fight where there are frequent exchanges — and that could well be the case — either man could get the other in trouble at any time.
For all of Pacquiao’s quickness and energy he is a fighter who can be hit and dropped in his own eagerness to inflict hurt. He was down against Aussie Nedal Hussein and a Kazhak named Yeshmangbetov, and also suffered a flash knockdown against Barrera that was essentially a slip.
It would not surprise me at all to see Pacquiao down in this fight. You would expect him to get up and come back firing if this indeed happens, but he has never been hit by anyone as big and strong as Morales.
But then, I don’t think that Morales has been in with anybody who hits quite as fast and forcefully as Pacquiao.
In his last fight, in the Philippines, Pacquiao lifted a Thai opponent off the floor with one of his punches. He hasn’t won a fight on points in more than seven years. When Pacquiao hits a man he’s usually out, then and there, or on his way.
Still, one has to wonder if Pacquiao’s punches will have quite the same effect on a much bigger man such as Morales, who will most likely be a light-welterweight by the time the two men get into the ring.
Pacquiao’s southpaw stance is not likely to be a factor because the Filipino is not terribly hard to hit. Morales had no trouble landing his punches against southpaw world champions Daniel Zaragoza, Kevin Kelley and Paulie Ayala, while another left-hander, the Puerto Rican Angel Chacon, was blown away in two rounds.
Certainly Pacquiao doesn’t want to take too many shots from Morales, because even though El Terrible has had to go the distance in his last three fights I don’t think this indicates his punching power is diminishing. It was no surprise that he didn’t stop Jesus Chavez and Carlos Hernandez, who are both known for having extremely reliable chins, and in Barrera he was meeting one of the world’s elite fighters (and I have heard people in boxing offer the opinion that had the Barrera fight been a 15-rounder, Morales would have won by knockout: He certainly hurt Barrera in the last round).
So Morales remains, in my view, a very serious banger indeed. In fact, I don’t think either man can be called the puncher in the fight: They’re both punchers. But I think it is very important for Pacquiao that he strikes first and makes an immediate statement.
If Pacquiao can land enough flush shots to get Morales a bit dizzy and disorientated in the initial stages it might reduce considerably the Mexican fighter’s ability to mount a charge later in the fight.
But if Morales gets through the early rounds relatively undamaged he could start to back up Pacquiao and perhaps overpower him in the second half of the fight.
Summing up this intriguing contest, it seems to me that the only clear advantage for Morales, his physical size and experience at fighting at 130lbs, could be cancelled out by Pacquiao’s superior speed.
The two biggest intangibles, I think, are correlated: How well can Pacquiao take the bigger man’s punch, and will Pacquiao’s power be lessened against the heavier fighter?
We should find out the answer very early in the proceedings.
I don’t see any so-called feeling-out period here. I believe the two fighters will go right at it.
Instinct tells me, though, that all of Morales’s hard fights — not least being the third instalment in the series with Barrera — have taken a toll that will show up eventually in a big fight. And I think this could be that fight.
If for that reason and no other I go for Pacquiao to win, probably by decision, because a man like Morales is so very hard to stop.
