MANNY Pacquiao and Erik Morales are scheduled to fight again. In separate bouts, in the same card.
Promoter Bob Arum revealed this Wednesday as he finally confirmed reports that the Filipino boxing icon will battle WBC Fecarbox featherweight champion Hector Velasquez on Sept. 10 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.
The Pacquiao-Velasquez duel shares top billing with the showdown pitting Morales, who beat the Filipino in his last fight, against 1996 Olympian Zahir Raheem.
Should both Morales and Pacquiao come out victorious, Arum said he plans to pit the two in a much-awaited rematch in December.
“I think they’re both (Zahir and Velasquez) tougher than you think,” Arum told Boxingtalk. “Zahir Raheem has a tough style and the guy Pacquiao’s fighting is also a tough customer.”
The 5-foot-7 Velasquez, a 30-year-old native of Tijuana, Mexico, parades a 41-10-2 win-loss-draw card with 30 KOs. He is on a four-bout winning streak since losing by decision to Rocky Juarez in 2003 for the vacant WBC Continental Americas featherweight title.
Between the two match-ups, Morales is expected to have the tougher assignment as he faces ex-Olympian, once-beaten Raheem, who boasts of 26 victories with 16 KOs.
Among Raheem’s victims was former WBC featherweight champ Luisito Espinosa, whom he stopped in the eighth round in 2002.
Pacquiao is slated to fly to Los Angeles in the last week of July to be at ringside when fellow Wild Card Gym fighter Brian Viloria, an American fighter of Filipino roots, goes for the WBC 108-lb crown against Eric Ortiz at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
