When the Nevada Athletic Commission decided last week to no longer force boxers to wear the same brand of gloves, executive director Marc Ratner believed his days of haggling over the issue were over. On Friday, the commission will approve Winning, Reyes, Grant and Everlast gloves for use in competition in Nevada.
Despite the new regulation, Ratner is dealing with the fallout of another glove controversy as it pertains to the Manny Pacquiao-Erik Morales 12-round super featherweight fight Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden. It is a bout with significant implications, but Pacquiao’s camp is warring over the choice of gloves.
Pacquiao wants to wear Reyes gloves, but promoter Murad Muhammad signed a contract requiring the fighter to wear Winning gloves, which Morales wears. That angered Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s outspoken trainer, who said Muhammad should have asked Pacquiao his preference.
Roach said he paid $170 out of his own pocket to buy a pair of Winning gloves so Pacquiao could get used to them.
“Let’s be honest — the gloves won’t make the difference in who wins or loses the fight,” Roach said. “But if you put your hands in both pairs, they definitely have a different feel and each fighter has a preference.
“This is something Manny at least should have had a say in. He shouldn’t have to be worried about how his hands are going to feel in these gloves. He should have been allowed to relax and concentrate on Morales and not worry about this kind of stuff.”
The Winning gloves are more padded around the knuckles and provide more protection, while the Reyes gloves are regarded as punchers’ gloves because the knuckles are less padded. Pacquiao is a knockout puncher and Roach feels he may lose some of that advantage with more padded gloves.
In November’s Morales-Marco Antonio Barrera fight, Ratner was in intense negotiations with Barrera less than an hour before the fight as Barrera vowed to pull out if he wasn’t allowed to alter the Winning gloves he was being forced to wear.
“There’s a certain amount of irony in this,” Ratner said. “We’ve finally gotten the rule where we want it, with the caveat being if (a gloves stipulation) wasn’t in the contract, and now here we are fighting over this because it is in the contract.”
Muhammad said he had no choice because Morales was the bigger attraction and the established pay-per-view star. Muhammad was trying to make Pacquiao-Morales for last July 30, only 2 1/2 months after Pacquiao’s thrilling, controversial draw with Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM.
Muhammad said Morales demanded Winning gloves. He said Roach advocated fighting 122-pound champion Oscar Larios instead of Morales, which would have given Pacquiao his choice of gloves.
“(Pacquiao) has worn those Reyes, and in five fights in a row, he came out with problems with his hands,” Muhammad said. “Either Freddie Roach doesn’t know how to wrap hands, those gloves ain’t no good or both. It’s got to be something. But when the kid (Pacquiao) wrapped his own hands (in a December tuneup bout), he had no problem with his hands, so maybe that should tell you that Roach can’t tape.”
