MIGHTY MANNY WINS!

January 22, 2006 - by Ron Borges

Manny Pacquiao's future is as bright today as Erik Morales' is cloudy.

By surgically taking the three-time world champion apart Saturday night in Las Vegas, leaving Morales stretched on the canvas for the first time in his noble career in the 10th round, Pacquiao made a loud declaration about himself. Having now stopped both Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera (TKO 11), Pacquiao now has only one man left to tattoo to secure undeniable supremacy among boxing's finest little men.

Twenty months ago, Pacquiao appeared to be on his way to doing the same thing to featherweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez after knocking him down three times in the first round and injuring his nose so badly it bled throughout the rest of the fight but Marquez somehow recovered, slowly battling back into the fight until he cut Pacquiao in the fifth round, staggered him in the sixth and closed the night by winning five of the last six rounds in the opinion of one judge and four of the six in the opinion of another to earn a hard fought draw.

Pacquiao insisted he'd done enough to win but if he had it was by so slim a margin as to be undetectable to the naked eye. Because of that draw one question remains unanswered for Pacquiao. It is one Marquez has wanted to pursue for some time and with the need for exercising the rematch clause in his contact with Morales seemingly unnecessary (though perhaps unavoidable if Morales insists upon it) a move toward a rematch with Marquez to settle an old score would seem both logical and profitable.

Surely there will be a call for a rubber match by Morales' supporters since Pacquiao lost the first meeting between them but the argument to do this again any time soon with a fading former champion is minimal at best and would happen only for financial reasons (which are often the only reason anything happens in boxing). For it to happen Morales would have to loudly demand it as well, which he might be reluctant to do for a while if he spends any time reviewing the tapes of what Pacquiao did to him.

"If we fought him again it would be easier,'' said Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach, whose flawless game plan set up Pacquiao to dominate Morales just the way he did. "Morales has had a great career but he was in against a guy coming up who's fresher (than he is). Manny's body work broke him down. He was fatiguing. His punches weren't crisp after the sixth round. The body attack took it away from Morales.''

Contractually Morales has the right to make the demand however and surely HBO's fight fans would gladly pay for the right to see the two of them go at each other a third time because the first two fights were classic confrontations of macho-fueled give-and-take, although the final six rounds Saturday night were mostly Pacquiao giving and Morales taking.

That's because the 29-year-old Morales faded badly after controlling the first five rounds with his jab and superior size and strength. Morales hurt Pacquiao in the opening round and again in Round 3 but both times Pacquiao recovered quickly and soon was firing back with fast combinations and the body attack Roach felt was a key element in their victory.

Slowly at first and suddenly in the end, Morales began to unravel from the relentless pain of it all, a victim not only of Pacquiao's attacks but also those of Barrera, Wayne McCullough, Injin Chi, Daniel Zaragoza and so many others with whom he had warred and won over the years. All of them had taken a toll on Morales, who fights in the hand-to-hand warrior style favored most by Mexican fight fans. A week before the fight in fact, Morales had joked about his lack of defense, something he claimed was more a choice on his part than happenstance while denying it meant anything but why he had become such a legend in Mexican boxing circles.

His explanation for eschewing ducking and dodging was that while he knew he could be a better defensive fighter if he chose to he believes defense is not what fans want to see. At least not his fans. What they're paying for is to watch leather fly and that's what he gives them, often at great risk to himself. Saturday night was such a night but unlike so many others in the past he was not able to match the artillery being thrown at him this time and so, as the rounds wore on, he simply wore down.

"I was getting hit a lot in the head,'' Morales (48-4) conceded after referee Kenny Bayless stopped the fight with Morales on the floor at 2:33 of the 10th round with no apparent willingness to get up a second time or any clear understanding of the need for it. "As the rounds went on I was getting tired. At the end I felt slow.''

He felt slow because that is what he had become. Pacquiao was in front of him all night and as the rounds progressed and the difference in hand speed grew as Morales tired, Pacquiao began to back Morales up with stinging combinations that turned his face purple. But the key to those punches landing so accurately and so often were the deep, digging shots to the body which eventually took away Morales' legs and left him all but helpless to do anything in the second half of the fight but try to hold his ground and trade with a younger, faster opponent who was proving that the great controversy he had claimed existed over his inability to use REYES gloves the first time they fought actually had merit.

"There's definitely a difference (between REYES gloves and the WINNING brand Morales favored and both had to wear in their first fight,'' Roach claimed. "We fought in men's gloves tonight. The gloves were more of a mental thing for Manny but they're called punchers' gloves for a reason.

"Morales was wearing WINNING gloves and they're good for defense but we saw in the first fight he'd hold his hands high and his body was wide open. We knew we could hit him in the body. I told Manny he had to back this guy up, be first with his jab and then attack the body. I told Manny 'Don't let him come forward.' Morales is tough to fight when he's coming in, pressuring you, but he can't fight backing up.''

By the end he simply couldn't fight at all any more. Clearly fading in the eighth and ninth rounds from the accumulation of punches, Morales appeared exhausted as he sat on his stool between rounds. Pacquiao noticed that and decided it was time to go all out, a thought that first dawned on him after he'd landed a particularly powerful body shot in the sixth round that had a telling effect on Morales. From that moment, Pacquiao knew both what that punch meant and when to press the advantage it signaled he was establishing.

"In the sixth round he was really tired,'' Pacquiao said."I hit him a punch to the body and I could feel him sag. I could see in the corner he was tiring but I had to take my time. He is a great fighter. In the eighth and ninth rounds I knew he was hurt but he was still dangerous. I had to be patient.''

He was, methodically chopping Morales down like a matador working a dangerous but wounded bull, until there was little left to do but finish him off. Once he did there wasn't much left of Erik Morales any more but his enviable record and his pride. Manny Pacquiao could break his body and take away his legs but he couldn't erase either of those.

At least not unless they try to do this again.