He’s Ready for Round 2

There were days, Erik Morales acknowledges with a sly grin, that he grew weary of training at the solitary Mexican mountaintop Otomi complex, a bare-bones, back-to-the-roots operation that has served as his camp for nearly five years.

And really, who could blame him?

The mind-numbing roadwork through the woods would wear him down. His thoughts would begin to drift as he pounded out too-many-to-count push-ups and sit-ups. The hours of hitting speed bags and focus pads would take their toll.

Oh sure, the spartan El Centro Ceremonial Otomi, about a three-hour drive from Mexico City, afforded Morales a chance to concentrate on the task at hand--preparing for his fight Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena against hated rival Marco Antonio Barrera--and not worry about distractions. Especially because there’s no electricity or telephones on the land that once was sacred ground to the Aztecs but for decades has served as a training center for elite Mexican athletes.

But isn’t there a saying about all work and no play making Juanito a dull boy?

Morales needed a respite, lest he burn himself out preparing for the rematch of 2000’s fight of the year.

So when the mood would strike him, he’d break camp by jumping into a car, snake down the winding mountain road for about 45 minutes and pull into the nearest village that had the requisite electricity and accompanying phone line. His hands often still wrapped in tape, Morales would break out his ever-present laptop computer, log on to the Internet and surf cyberspace for hours on end, updating the boxing Web site he oversees while shooting off e-mails to check in with the musical act he recently signed.

The reigning World Boxing Council featherweight champion, who seemingly entered the world with one strike against him when he was born in a room above a sweaty gym in Tijuana’s red-light district, is more than meets the eye.

Sure, he uses his hard-knock life experience of growing up in one of Tijuana’s seedier neighborhoods as an excuse for cursing like a sailor--he used offensive language to question Barrera’s sexuality while horrifying the more well-heeled of Mexican society. But Morales as the Mexican Mike Tyson? Hardly.

The darker-skinned Morales, who was once called a “dumb Indian” by the more pale and Mexico City-raised Barrera, has a polished corporate side to him as well as being La Zona Norte’s favorite son.

“I’ve been through a lot of bad things in my life but the key is not allowing them to get me down,” said Morales, a high school dropout who went to trade school to learn how to repair refrigerators and is now a married father of three. “You can’t let negative things affect you and by being involved with positive people and positive things like music, it only makes you a better person.”

It’s no surprise then that the person Morales became was a boxer.

The gym he was born above belonged to his father. And with Jose Morales a flyweight contender in the 1970s, the line between home and work became blurred, so a career using his fists was inevitable. Jose is now his son’s manager and shares training duties with Fernando Fernandez and Al Stankie after Floyd Mayweather Sr. was released early in camp.

The younger Morales began boxing when he was 5, eventually won 11 amateur titles and earned the nickname of El Terrible for his devastating knockout power and the ferocious manner in which he dispatched his opponents.

The only thing more fierce than his punch was his pride in being from Mexico’s border region. Morales, 25, has Frontera (Border) stitched into the waistband of his boxing trunks and, when he’s training in a gym where there’s electricity, he’ll pump up the stereo to feel the beat of the banda/ranchera musical artist he promotes, Nicko Flores.

“It’s about respect,” Morales said, “earning it and keeping it.”

But while he won his first major title as a super bantamweight with an 11th-round technical knockout of Daniel Zaragoza on Sept. 6, 1997, and is 41-0 with 31 knockouts, including victories over seven world champions, Morales has been dogged of late.

Whispers that he has not been the same since eking out a hotly contested split decision against Barrera on Feb. 19, 2000 have haunted Morales.

In his two most recent fights--against Guty Espadas for his WBC 126-pound title on Feb. 17, 2001 and versus Injin Chi last July 28--Morales looked sluggish and was taken the distance by both fighters. Though Morales won both fights by unanimous decision, many questioned his efforts in the ring as well as the judges’ scorecards.

“I fought two tough guys and I took a lot of punishment, that’s all,” he said. “I thought I handled them well.”

The media on both sides of the border have hinted that he has been given “gift wins” as the “can’t-miss prospect” fighting under the powerful Top Rank banner.

And while Top Rank President Bob Arum dismisses such talk, he acknowledges that a content Morales let his weight balloon to 160 pounds before the Espadas fight.

There has been no such satisfaction this time, however, as Morales said Monday he was within two pounds of making 126 by Friday’s weigh-in.

“I think if Morales fights the way he should fight and not the way Barrera wants him to fight,” Arum said, “that Morales will end up knocking out Barrera the same way [Lennox] Lewis knocked out [Mike] Tyson” in the heavyweight title fight June 8.

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*--* WBC Featherweight Championship Fight Who: Champion Erik Morales vs. Marco Antonio Barrera When: Saturday, 6 p.m. PDT Where: MGM Grand, Las Vegas About Morales: WBC featherweight champion; former WBC super-bantamweight title-holder About Barrera: Former two-time WBO super-bantamweight champion Morales Barrera Fights 41 57 Victories 41 54 Losses 0 3 Knockouts 31 39 Born 9-1-76 6-17-74

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