In the fall of 2002, many boxing insiders were picking southpaw jr. featherweight champion Paulie Ayala to beat Erik Morales, then 26, the collective assessment mainly keying off of Ayala’s victory over the technical Bones Adams by decision and Morales having lost on the scorecards to career rival Marco Antonio Barrera, both fights highlights of the 2002 boxing calendar. What bothered boxing insiders about Morales was the attrition rate of his career. How could he have battled every willing major fighter in his era from Daniel Zaragoza to Junior Jones to Wayne McCullough to In Jin Chi to Marco Antonio Barrera by the age of 24 and still have anything left for the balance of a still youthful championship career?
Surely the laws of general entropy had to apply to Erik Morales.
Gaps had seemed to appear in his ability to maximize his performance levels, case and point his effort to defend his WBC featherweight title against Guty Espadas Jr. Though Morales won comfortably on the cards, he was out hit by dozens of punches. The timing of his punishing right hand failed to synchronize to Espadas’ predictable patterns; his energy level during the contest never raising itself to enact anything like offensive domination. Most ringside observes, who criticized the champ with a modicum of sympathy, felt he’d had a flat performance, certainly an uninspired one. But when he circled, sometimes flittered and generally jabbed his way to a points win over In Jin Chi all anyone could talk about was what was wrong with Morales. Winning was no longer enough for the Tijuana born master boxer-puncher. Where had the pop on his shot gone? It was his inability to master small in-the-ring events, the over reliance on movement, the discordance of his combination power punching and a shadowing lethargy that appeared to be redefining Morales.
‘Too many tough fights, to young’ was the general theory as to why Morales’ boxing had turned to molasses. The general critique became: without the complete package of his skills set and the energy to fuel it, Morales was just another tall jabber, capable of right hand hitting, increasingly leaving his head in the hitting zone for longer and longer moments. Lucky for him he has such a great chin! What had once been an ability to fight with dimensional power had turned to predictable resolve to grind out a win. When would the crash of Erik Morales happen? The pundits issued forth that the signs of wear could be analyzed by simply reviewing half the total rounds in his last two fights.
Of course, favored by many, Paulie Ayala was rarely in that fight. Morales’ jab, on the button right hands, sliding defense and command of ring center dominated from the outset. Interestingly, In Jin Chi is now the WBC featherweight champion, bearer of Morales’ old crown, the perspective of that admittedly pedantic encounter ripe for clearer perspective. Morales himself just keeps on performing, fighting himself out of mitigating problems, challenging those who proclaim to be champions and generally stamping his courage deeply unto his time, for all the fans of boxing, for all his challengers to ponder.
Raised over a boxing gym in Tijuana, Mexico, his existence enmeshed with the aspirations of budding prize fighters, Morales’ very life force beat to the passionate rhythms of personal struggle given craft and expression as boxing all around him. From the time he defeated respected Dominican Hector Sanchez, at the age of 19, Morales was earmarked as a fighter of quality, a future champion. He gave himself the ultimate gift for his coming of age twenty-first birthday, by taking down the grand old man of Mexican boxing Daniel Zaragoza. If the three fights with Marco Antonio Barrera have highlighted his competitive spirit, his willful triumph over Barrera slayer Manny Pacquiao gave meaning and measure to his world class championship career now eight years and over twenty fights in the unfolding.
Deflated at the loss to Marco Antonio Barrera in November 2004 – only his second career loss – Morales stunned most boxing observes in seeking a fight with the dynamic Pacquiao. The Pilipino who had leveled and humbled Barrera, the puncher who hammered Juan Manuel Marquez to within an eyelash of a first round knockout, was the man Morales demanded. Morales wanted to either skyrocket back to the top of boxing’s list of champions or fall in battle. And that commitment to return to greatness gave evidence to Morales’ own greatness. When most fighters would have chosen two months on a beach consoling themselves with sun and sex, attempting to reinvest in the mere notion of confidence, endlessly reviewing flawed tactics and soaking up the comforts of rationalizing pity, Morales went back to work.
His approach to fighting Pacquiao was all business. He determined not to fight himself or regret. Calculatingly, he trimmed his entourage down to its workable essentials. Back in the gym, training at altitude at the Centro Ceremorial Otomi in the mountains near Mexico City, he devised the plan to bring himself back to his own center as a fighter. He would complete the journey of rediscovery not by artificial management or self-help indoctrination. Instead Morales returned to the basics, building upon the hunger of necessity, channeling his role as the desperate campaigner. As far as he had come as a professional fighter and world champion, Erik Morales understood the foundational aspects of prize fighting. With disciplined stealth, Morales worked every day off of the energy of being nervous yet committed, a champion at the juncture of irrelevance.
In the spotlight of the media Morales is an intense, always in the moment guy. But he’s also a man of tremendous emotional vitality. It’s against his nature to over indulge or satiate. In the role of the hunted, the wounded, Morales’ very nature responds with the ability to marshal the internal, the intangible. For so long Morales had been the champion, the defender, and yet facing up to the left handed power and furry of Pacquiao he was thought, going in, to be the sacrificial lamb to Pacquiao’s driving legend. His promotional team at Top Rank and Morales’ tightened inner circle prayed and thought differently but wasn’t the writing clearly on the wall for Morales at last? When the doubters resurfaced with those well articulated reservations, the ones dating back to the Ayala fight, it seemed like the future had to be the past for Morales, the championship boxer.
How much longer could Morales find the full compliment of his talents having fought through such seasons of peril? Wasn’t his age of twenty-eight his single most deceiving personal and professional statistic? And what about his often injured right hand? Wasn’t the undeniable fact of his encyclopedic list of victims all one needed to know about his probable fate? Were not the wars with Barrera alone definitive proof of his pending doom? Had Morales himself not admitted he’d not been able to fight to his potential on the night, and against the man he considered his most hated enemy in boxing, Marco Antonio Barrera?
Looking squarely at Erik Morales was to experience vertigo. Bernard Hopkins may have made a career out of denying time’s ultimate embrace, but is that ever the case for those rare few, like Morales, who begin paying the price for ultimate success so early? Fight fans had been literally watching Erik Morales battle foes for years dissecting every flawed combination, every advantage squandered and scrutinizing the dwindling effectiveness of his right hand. Interesting that so many people for so long watched all the negatives, studied what they perceived were conspicuous flaws in his offense.
Then came the raw, up tempo, inspired outing against Pacquiao. By beating the great Morales, Pacquiao and his team knew that HBO would be panting at the thought of a Pacquiao-Barrera rematch. All Freddie Roach’s man had to do was expose Morales with speedy offensive pressure and humming left hand shots to the head. Knock what remained of the stuffing out of the hero of Tijuana and a pay per view colossus was waiting for Pacquiao, HBO, Barrera and Golden Boy Promotions.
Again, Morales and Bob Arum at Top Rank had other plans for his impending demise. Instead of fighting out the string of his top level career, Morales came fully prepared to fight a winning fight and bludgeon and confound with all the stirred ambition at his command and with all the versatile capability his professionalism could wage. It was Morales who left the ring at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on March 19, 2005 to the raving applause reserved for conquering heroes. Waving to the fans, smiling contently, Morales once again gave all the fans of boxing and those who live off of its brutal industry another chance to see him for what he truly is and always has been, a legend in his time.
Morales, for all of his reserve and introspection, has continually fought with grace and grit, talent and passion. The evidence abounds throughout his career. He hasn’t needed to make a spectacle of himself acting like an idiot, talking smack or preaching pre-fight drivel out of both sides of his mouth like other ‘name’ champions of his time.
He’s contended himself with winning the big fights and punishing those who sought to vanquish him and outclassing those who merely came forward to do what they and others had planned. Yet Morales continues to demand of himself all that champions must. He’s still a fighter of dimension and purpose who wins one round by boxing and moving, jabbing and defusing his opponent’s offensive strikes. Then the next round he turns counter-punching into the launching pad for hard combinations to the head, never forgetting to ravage the body with hooks. He turns from defender to attacker, going forward or ebbing back to defensible positions at ring center, all the while devising his next counter insurgence. His opponents battle under the pressure of knowing that Morales will never give up and that it will take their best fight, their career outing to get him near to defeat.
Erik Morales, call him a fighter, and understand his greatness.
