Pacquiao Likes What He Sees

After their fight last March, Manny Pacquiao kept saying it would have been different if he could have seen Erik Morales clearly, if a cut above Pacquiao’s right eye hadn’t seriously blurred his vision.

Pacquiao could see clearly Saturday night in their super-featherweight rematch at Thomas & Mack Center. And what he saw was a Morales who hardly resembled the fighter who routinely earned the nickname Erik the Terrible.

What Pacquiao saw was a slower Morales, a Morales operating on shaky legs, a Morales whose punches lacked his trademark power, a Morales who seemed headed for a terrible end.

And finally, Pacquiao saw what he had dreamed of since March: Morales crumpled against the ropes, stopped for the first time in his career.

At 2:33 of the 10th round, after Morales went down for the second time in the round, referee Kenny Bayless halted the match, giving Morales (48-4, 34 knockouts) his third loss in his last four fights.

“He never hurt me,” said Pacquiao (41-3-2, 32). “He was having problems taking my punches. I had no problem taking his punches.”

As solidly as Morales was beaten, it could have been worse. He was staggered by a Pacquiao left hand in the second round, grabbing the ropes to maintain his balance. That could have been called a knockdown if Bayless had felt the ropes had held Morales up.

And, at the end of the sixth round, Morales appeared to be going down from a punch when, fortunately for him, he backed inadvertently into Bayless, keeping him up for another round as the bell rang.

In that sixth round, Pacquiao landed 32 power shots to only eight for Morales

Afterward, Morales didn’t try to minimize the beating he had received.

“He hurt me with a lot of good shots,” Morales said. “He was hitting me a lot in the head. As the rounds went on, I was getting more tired. At the end, I felt slow. He hit me just as hard in this fight as he did in the first one.”

Said Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer: “The tide turned in the sixth round. I could see Morales fading from the body punches. In the first fight, Manny was left-hand happy. This time, he landed a lot of right hooks.”

So what now for Morales, the Tijuana fighter who has lost to Marco Antonio Barrera, Zahir Raheem and now Pacquiao in his last four matches? There was a clause in the contract for this fight for a rubber match if Pacquiao won

“If he wants it, I will have no problem giving him a rematch,” Pacquiao said.

It might not be as simple as that.

“I don’t think I can ever make 130 pounds again,” said Morales, who was taken to a local hospital as a precautionary measure.

It is highly unlikely Pacquiao would go up to 135. And even if he did, Morales struggled at 135 in his last fight, against Raheem.

On Saturday night, however, Pacquiao, the biggest athlete in the Philippines, was too busy celebrating to spend much time worrying about his future.

Asked in the middle of a crowd of supporters what the difference was between the first fight and Saturday’s, a smiling Pacquiao broke it down to three words:

“I could see.”

*

In the semi-main event, Martin Castillo (30-1, 16) of Mexico defended his World Boxing Assn. super-flyweight title by split decision over Alexander Munoz (28-2, 26) of Venezuela.

Castillo overcame a first-round knockdown and accidental head butts in the fifth and sixth rounds that left him with cuts over his right eye and under his left.

There was no doubt Munoz had been in a fight as well. By the time the match ended, his right eye was swollen shut and he had blood coming from his nose and mouth.

Both of Munoz’s defeats have come at the skilled hands of Castillo. Castillo had taken the title from Munoz by decision in December 2004 and had successfully defended it twice before Saturday night.