LOS ANGELES, California — Manny Pacquiao, who confided he did not have to avoid his favorite dishes in the run-up to the official weigh-in, yesterday said he has a hunch he would be able to take out Erik Morales in the latter rounds.
That’s considering that Morales will have to practically lead the life of a hunger striker in order to make the 130-lb limit for their second encounter on Jan. 21.
“If Morales comes in over by one pound, he pays me $250,000, but the fight goes on,” Pacquiao told his guests at the Max’s Restaurant here, thereby confirming an earlier ruling by the Nevada State Boxing Commission.
It’s a $250,000 penalty in his favor for every excess pound registered by Morales, Pacquiao said.
It’s widely known that the taller Morales, a three-time world champion, had had to agonize and come in like a tubercular penitent in the weigh-in for his previous encounter with Pacquiao last year.
That simply means Morales has to again deprive himself of proper nutrients as the next fight day nears, Pacquiao surmised.
Pacquiao, 27, said that with Morales now older, it would be doubly harder for the 29-year-old Mexican ring craftsman to trim down to 130 lbs.
Claiming he’s at his best form, Pacquiao said he plans to sustain pressure with the hope of tiring down Morales in the second half of the 12-round bout.
“I feel he would run out of wind starting the seventh or eighth round,” Pacquiao said in Filipino over lunch yesterday.
Pacquiao said one does not have to be a physician in order to understand the cruel chemistry that rumbles in the intestines of a hard worker who doesn’t get the right nutrients to sustain his strength.
