By Salvador Rodriguez
Tijuana's Erik "El Terrible" Morales (52-7, 36 KO's) explained why he refused to shed off any more excess weight for tonight's fight with undefeated Danny Garcia (22-0, 14KOs) at Reliant Arena in Houston, Texas. At Friday's weigh-in, Morales weighed in at 142-pounds, two pounds over the junior welterweight limit. Rather than take his two hours to sweat off the weight, he vacated the WBC 140-pound title and took a $50,000 fine [$25,000 per pound over the limit].
According to Morales, he was trying to avoid a repeat of his past mistakes against Manny Pacquiao, where the Mexican veteran killed himself on the scale to make weight and got knocked out badly in their rematch and their trilogy meeting.
“I believe that it was better to take care of the fight than the championship. I tried [to drop the weight] but I couldn't do it. I was worried that if I [attempted to remove] the weight, it was going to [affect] the fight. Nevertheless, I think we made a good decision, now I can look good and we can recover [from the weigh-in] and win. The championships will continue to come," Morales said.
"Once I was threatened with $500,000 dollars for each pound over the limit [in the third Pacquiao fight]. Now it's only $25 thousand, but I will not make the same mistake twice of killing myself on the scale. We are going forward and we're going to win. I had a choice to either give up the weight or go for the win and I decided to go for the win."
Salvador Rodriguez covers boxing in Mexico for The Record and BoxingScene.com.
