I don’t know if I can think of a top 10 fighter who gets less respect than Morales. After his first fight with Marco Antonio Barrera people have been writing him off and why I ask? Their first fight was very close, newsflash so were the other two fights; in fact if you watched all 36 rounds you might have scored them 18 a piece. Anyways, never forget that a person who is fighting for a higher purpose is a dangerous person to fight. The Morales - Barrera rivalry is bigger than Junior Jones, Naseem Hamed, Paulie Ayala and Manny Pacquiao. There was no way that Erik Morales was: 1) going to let a chance to show up Barrera go for naught and 2) let Pacquiao get a clean sweep over Mexico’s finest fighters since Julio Cesar Chavez.

As far as the fight goes, I gave Manny Pacquiao rounds 1, 9, and 12 when he really hurt Morales who for some reason, after getting away with it once, elected to switch to southpaw again and also go toe to toe with Pacquiao. While I do think Erik Morales did pretty much everything he wanted short of stopping Pacquiao, Manny deserves credit for being able to finish the fight after dealing with some adversity in the 5th rounds after the class of heads.

People tend to underrate Erik Morales for some reason, be it because he’s easy to hit or because he elects to trade when it’s clear he has superior boxing skills. I applaud him for wanting to fight and using his ego to allow him to get into wars when he can afford to. At no point other than the body shot in round one and the clean up left-hook Morales got hit with in round 12 did he even look worried about what Manny Pacquiao was throwing at him. His body attack was truly telling and even more impressive were the lead right hands to the body which were a thing of beauty. It seemed like the only time Manny looked to have a clear advantage was in the middle of the ring when Morales was in close and he could use his hand speed. Other than that, when Morales was boxing on the inside or out, he was wearing Pacquiao out.

Manny Pacquiao’s whole game plan was to put heat on Erik Morales, make him back up and then stop him. After the 1st round Morales had Pacquiao backing up and searching for answers. To me his corner as a whole let him down. Morales has been hurt 3 times in his career once by Barrera, once by Jesus Chavez and once in the 12th by Pacquiao, so to assume that because he’s hurt everyone else he would hurt Morales was a very costly mistake.

One thing that did make me very angry was the issue about the gloves. Now I know Larry Merchant did his part to create controversy about the whole glove issue and I thought Manny took the bait a little easy saying he would have stopped Morales had they been using Reyes gloves...  Morales hit Manny with some pretty solid shots that sent him backwards and stung. I’m pretty sure had he been wearing Reyes Pacquiao wouldn’t have taken them so well either. The point is and I see both sides of the issue, you can’t say “if” in boxing, “if” doesn’t do a damn thing. “If” Sugar Ray and Marvin Hagler had gone 15 rounds then what? Or “if” they’d used a smaller ring, then what? “If” Oscar had elected to box rather than run from Trinidad, then what? “If” Shane Mosley had fought at 140 then what? “If” Lewis and Tyson or Tyson and Holyfield had fought back in 1990 or 1991 then what? They didn’t, so right or wrong, fair or unfair, we have to deal with what happens in the present.

I thought Larry Merchant brought up the point and Roy Jones made his point and the issue was put to rest. Bringing up the whole glove thing again after the way these two fighters fought  was an unprofessional thing to do, and not that it did, but it was an attempt to stir up controversy for his own agenda, not for the common good of the boxing fan; just as he’s done in the past, Merchant will continue to do in the future.

On the whole, the fight was everything we wanted and even came close to the pre-fight between Jorge Arce and Hussein Hussein which has to be a front runner for Fight of the Year. Boxing fans needed this fight as did Erik Morales, who couldn’t afford to lose two fights in a row, and even some questions were answered about Pacquiao, who should he decided to go down to 126 pounds, will run things for years to come. This was a great evening of boxing and the sport as a whole needs more nights like this in future months and years to come.