Morales-Pacquiao I: we all should have known what was coming

[DiegoFuego]

by the way lampley is a nuthugging little ***** pac was wining the 3rd round and lampley is on morales jock rjj to talking about how morales is embarrasing pac in front of his hometown, and merchant is saying calmdown fools

I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who noticed that ****. I gave the 3rd to Pacquiao, but everyone other than Merchant were riding Morales' **** that whole round. Lederman gave every close round to Morales it seemed. Definitely could have seen it a draw. I agree with you guys that it's harder to see it as a Pacquiao victory, but a draw was completely within reason. I think the judges did a good job this fight.

[loui_ludwig]

In the 5th round, Manny was winning the round until the ref stop the fight so the doctor can check Pac's cut, then suddenly they gave it to EM.

We can look at the 2nd fight again, but EM won fair and square. Yeah, we can say what could have been the result if Pac was wearing Reyes gloves and don't have a cut. A win for Pac or a draw or the same result? But its written in history already.

[Papa Ace]

its nice to see a pacquiao thread not going ballistic after two pages

[miron_lang]

Yeah. Nice thread DiegoF I hope it stays this way up to the 5thpage

[FLASH GORDON]

If you watch their first fight, in retrospect, there was absolutely no reason to think Morales could have beaten Pacquiao the second time around. Pacquiao was giving Morales hell nearly every round, even while wiping at his cut throughout the whole second half of the fight. Morales did not win as clearly as I previously thought. Now I did give Pacman pretty much all the rounds that seemed close (because he hits so ridiculously hard, you can't give Morales a round unless he outlands Pacquiao in power punches). Most of the fight, Morales is landing killer jabs, but Pacquiao's power punching completely negates it. The right hook was a monster for Pacquiao in this fight. I have it 115-113 for Morales just like the judges, but this fight was damn close, unanimous decision or not...and remember, that's WITH Pacquiao's horrible cut. Sure, Morales probably could have won easier had he not turned southpaw in the 12th, but that's just who he is, and you gotta love Morales for it. He didn't wanna coast at the end. He wanted to close the show with a ****, and every fan in that arena had to be thankful for that.

I'd forgotten how much I love this fight, but watching it again, especially now, it's so obvious that Pacquiao could have won that fight and would definitely win a rematch (which he did). Morales takes way more damage in the fight, and it probably hurt his career big time, but if he hadn't fought Pacquiao, we all would be debating what would have happened years later. As it stands, Morales stood toe to toe with one of the hardest punchers p4p in the sport and survived a hell of a fight. I actually picked Pacquiao to win the first one, then picked Morales to win the rematch, going against my gut feeling both times. Morales is a true warrior and a real man for taking on Pacquiao when Barrera wouldn't, but Pacquiao was simply too much for him.

I do agree on this one. I'm a Pac fan and thought Morales won convincingly when I watched it live. I thought then that Pac needed both rounds 11 and 12 to just get a draw. But he lost 11.

I just recently watched the tape, and the fight wasn't as one-sided as I thought it was. But I still scored it the same. But some of the later rounds were too close to close. But I still gave them to Morales. And Rd12 of that fight is what we were to see in the next two fights.

[macman]

I thought it was an excellent fight, but I had Morales as a clear winner - thought the scoring was a little too generous to Pacquaio as it was.

Had Morales winning by 3 points clearly.

[Katz]

Pac outlands Morales in power punches......

[El Jesus]

as a morales fan, i definately thought a rematch would be a bad idea, i was afriad after the raheem fight, morales himself had lost momentum, and getting your momentum back usually doesnt involve 2 young hungry fighters in a row.

[ReadyUp]

by the way lampley is a nuthugging little ***** pac was wining the 3rd round and lampley is on morales jock rjj to talking about how morales is embarrasing pac in front of his hometown, and merchant is saying calmdown fools

And then Roy said that you have to have boxed before to know boxing....and if your not seeing what RJ was talking about then I'll explain it to you.

During the early rounds Morales was mocking Pac by raising his hands after Pac hit him. (Something Pac does regularly) Why does no one see this whenever RJ JR's comment was brought up?

[Bozo_no no]

I think the blood played a bigger factor than people were willing to accept at the time. If you brought it up after the fight all you heard was "excuses".

But in the end, Manny had blood gushing down into his eye (worst situation for that kind of cut) and Morales took advantage of that with his accurate jab.

I think it played a factor in the fight for sure. I was at the fight and I could see the blood from my seat which was fairly high up. It was also noted that Pacquiao had bloodwork done the morning of the weigh in because his previous samples were lost.

Regardless, it was a tight fight, 7-5 Morales.

At that point, I don't think Manny was using his right hand and in and out footwork like he did when he adjusted for the 2nd and 3rd fights. All of those factors lead to a Morales win in the 1st fight.