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If Top Rank’s wily promoter Bob Arum is to be believed – and why not because he is an old fox who knows the fight game inside out and is a master on how to hype an event – “The Battle” between Filipino national treasure Manny Pacquiao and legendary Mexican Erik “El Terrible” Morales at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas on Sunday is “a fight the sport of boxing can be proud of because it matches the two biggest heroes of two countries.”
It’s a fight that arguably sees a face-off between two of the most exciting fighters today and one that accentuates the woeful heavyweight scene which was for years the dominating division in fight fans attention . Arum, quite correctly, referred to Pacquiao as being a legend in the Philppines and “easily the most popular person, not athlete, not boxer but person, in the country There is not a Filipino in the Philippines or around the world, in the Middle East or the US that doesn’t know who Manny Pacquiao is.”
In the same vein Arum referred to Morales as the “pre-eminent fighter” in Mexico today completely ignoring WBC super featherweight champion Marco Antonio Barrera who beat Morales twice in three memorable encounters but is somehow not regarded as an exciting fighter in the caliber of Pacquiao who annihilated him in November 2004 and even Morales who actually didn’t want to fight Barrera a third time but eventually did and lost a controversial decision in a fight that some thought Morales should have won. [details]
It’s a fight that arguably sees a face-off between two of the most exciting fighters today and one that accentuates the woeful heavyweight scene which was for years the dominating division in fight fans attention . Arum, quite correctly, referred to Pacquiao as being a legend in the Philppines and “easily the most popular person, not athlete, not boxer but person, in the country There is not a Filipino in the Philippines or around the world, in the Middle East or the US that doesn’t know who Manny Pacquiao is.”
In the same vein Arum referred to Morales as the “pre-eminent fighter” in Mexico today completely ignoring WBC super featherweight champion Marco Antonio Barrera who beat Morales twice in three memorable encounters but is somehow not regarded as an exciting fighter in the caliber of Pacquiao who annihilated him in November 2004 and even Morales who actually didn’t want to fight Barrera a third time but eventually did and lost a controversial decision in a fight that some thought Morales should have won. [details]