THE FAT LADY STILL HASN’T SUNG

Two fights, two disputed decisions. But a third fight between Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales was by no means certain as these words were being written. Morales’s promoter, Bob Arum, says he doesn’t want it. Nor does Jose Sulaiman, the president of the World Boxing Council, which isn’t surprising seeing that Barrera refused to accept the WBC belt after his unanimous but debatable win over Morales at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas on 22 June.

Arum talked about Morales meeting Paulie Ayala, the world’s leading super bantam who is ready and willing to make the move up from 122lbs (8st 10lbs) to 126lbs (9st).

This would be an attractive fight and Arum says he will ask the WBC to sanction it for the now-vacant featherweight title. But what I’d like to see, what I think the fans would prefer and what the HBO TV network surely would like is a rubber match between Barrera and Morales. There is still unfinished business here.

I thought Barrera won the first match. He didn’t get the decision. This time I had Barrera winning again but strangely enough I was a lot less sure about it than the last time.

The trouble was that this time Barrera used a boxing, moving style in the first half of the fight. I thought that this was keeping him in the fight but it wasn’t the sort of strategy that allowed him to take control of the contest.

When Barrera started going right at Morales from the seventh, the fight began to tilt clearly in his favour. But he needed a storming last round to pull out the victory on the cards of the three judges.

The scoring was consistent, with the judges agreeing on nine of the 12 rounds. The consensus score (that is, with two or more officials agreeing on the same round) favoured Barrera by 115-113, or 7-5 in rounds. This wasn’t one of those fights where the judges’ scoring was all over the place.

Chuck Giampa of Las Vegas had it 116-112 in Barrera’s favour while Duane Ford of Las Vegas and Mike Glienna of Chicago each had it 115-113.

But a lot of people had Morales winning. Naturally, Bob Arum was among them. I heard people in the media section using the term “robbery”. 

Most of the crowd of 12,479 seemed happy with the verdict, but then, fans tend to remember the later rounds, and these were the rounds when Barrera was at his strongest.

Morales looked the worse for wear, with his right eye bruised and swollen, a cut on the bridge of the nose, blood inside the mouth, while Barrera was unmarked. But perhaps too much should not be read into this: Some fighters mark up more easily than others.

Of crucial importance was a ruling by referee Jay Nady in the seventh that what appeared to have been a knockdown scored by Morales was not the case. It seemed to me that a right to the body caused Barrera to touch down on his left glove, but Nady immediately waved his hands in the “no knockdown” gesture and indicated that Morales had stepped on Barrera’s foot. TV replays were inconclusive: Morales’s foot made contact with Barrera’s, who was pulling back. I had the impression that Barrera would have gone down anyway. All three judges made this a 10-9 round for Barrera. If referee Nady had ruled that Barrera had indeed been knocked down, the round would have gone to Morales — and a 10-8 round would have given him the decision in a three-point swing in the scoring.

So, with the differences of opinion over the decision and the disputed knockdown/no knockdown incident, there are compelling reasons for Barrera and Morales to do it again. 

True, the rematch wasn’t as punishingly thrilling as the original, but this was nonetheless a very good, tough fight — I even didn’t mind the tactical boxing of the early rounds. 

The early rounds were tricky. We had Morales moving forward but he wasn’t really landing much. Barrera was looking to steal rounds, using the jab, seeking to counter as the taller Morales reached and sometimes lunged with his punches.

Neither man seemed to want to go right at it with the heavy stuff in the initial stages and there was even a smattering of boos, which no one would have expected. 

These early rounds were the key to the fight. They reminded me of the fight in which Morales won the title with a unanimous but unpopular decision over fellow-Mexican Guty Espadas. In that fight, Espadas was pressing the fight and Morales was countering. I thought that Morales won that fight by using the same tactics that Barrera employed against him in their rematch.

The problem was, perhaps, one of perception. A lot of people assumed that because Barrera was, surprisingly, staying away he was blowing the rounds. But the 28-year-old from Mexico City was boxing an intelligent fight. A bit too intelligent, I thought, because he was putting himself in a position where he needed to mount an offensive in the second half; he had allowed the fight to become too close (after six rounds, judge Giampa had the boxers dead-level while Ford and Glienna each had Morales up by two points).

I’ll say this for Barrera, though: He always seemed to know, in his own mind, just what he was doing.

And although Barrera’s trainer, Rudy Perez, had told me before the fight, through an interpreter, that his man would be staying on Morales’s chest it smacked of disinformation (remember that the Barrera camp talked of a high-pressure fight against Naseem Hamed, only for the Mexican fighter to stand back and box Naz’s ears off).

The night before the fight, at a show at The Orleans casino hotel off the Vegas strip, Barrera’s assistant manager Marcus Maldonado — son of manager Ricardo — told me not to be surprised to see Barrera boxing early, then putting pressure on Morales as the fight progressed, which is exactly what happened.

Marcus Maldonado said in our conversation that he was not worried about the possibility of a close fight. He said that since the win over Hamed, Barrera’s confidence had soared to a new level. He said that, mentally, Barrera was in virtually an unbeatable state of mind.

And that’s how Barrera boxed in those early rounds. He was being pushed back at times but he boxed like a man who feels he has things going the way he wants them. There was no sense of desperation or urgency. His whole demeanour was one of: “I’m in charge.”

People seated in the media row behind me weren’t seeing it that way. They were seeing Morales winning round after round and commented loudly to each other. This can be distracting. One can be swayed (there is a comfort in consensus). Or, one can, if subconsciously, lean the other way so as not to be influenced.

These rounds needed total concentration if one was to score them accurately, and each round has to be scored as a complete fight in and of itself so as not to let scoring fall into a pattern.

In rounds such as these, one marks one’s score without any degree of certainty, even with a moment’s hesitation. 

There were times when Morales’s punches just missed as Barrera pulled his head away at the last moment. Morales did appear to be controlling the physical dimension of the fight but Barrera was jabbing quite nicely and as early as round two Morales was cut on the bridge of the nose and reddening around his high cheekbones. And I noticed that Morales was very respectful of the vicious left uppercut that Barrera threw as a counter. Barrera did some damage with this delivery and even when he was missing with the uppercut it was keeping Morales from steaming straight ahead. So, maybe Morales wasn’t dictating quite as much as it may have looked. 

Still, these opening rounds were very much a matter of opinion. Chuck Giampa had Barrera sweeping the first three rounds and I think he was on his own there. But, curiously, a round that everyone I spoke to seemed to think was a good one for Barrera — the sixth — was scored in favour of Morales by all three judges.

But if the first half of the fight saw no definitive advantage to either man — not that I saw — there was little doubt that Barrera was doing the more effective punching over the last six rounds.

In the ninth I thought there might even be a chance that he could stop Morales. The 25-year-old from the border city of Tijuana seemed to be weakening. His right eye was looking ugly and in danger of closing and Barrera landed some wicked shots. But Morales is proud, brave and durable. He fired back. But Barrera was now taking the fight to him, gloves up, walking through Morales’s punches — he seemed to give a brief nod to his rival as if to say: “Bring it on but I’m coming through.” It looked as if the last three rounds might be a struggle for survival for the fighter who calls himself El Terrible.

But no, Morales rallied in the 10th, reaching down and surging back. A left hook seemed to have Barrera’s legs giving a little and suddenly it was Morales who looked the stronger man. A right to the body seemed to hurt Barrera, reminding us that a rib injury he suffered in sparring had caused the fight to be postponed from its original date of 2 March.

The 11th round was hard-fought but I thought Barrera edged it with a fierce finish. All three judges gave the round to Barrera. And there was no doubt who won the last round. Barrera finished big, just as he had done in the first meeting, but Morales was still in the fight and landing punches of his own.

Morales threw his arms aloft at the final bell but Barrera, face as ever showing no emotion, went back to his corner in an unconcerned way, as if he had no doubt that he had won the fight although some read resignation into his body language.

Barrera’s handlers seemed a lot more anxious than he did. But even before Michael Buffer announced the decision an angry-looking Bob Arum was shouting down to ringside media: “How did you have it?” which gave the first indication that Morales was about to lose his undefeated record in his 42nd fight.

To me, the last round made it clear yet not conclusive for Barrera. While I had Barrera winning by 116-112 my first impression, before totalling my score, was of a two-point fight. But I must say that never in a fight with a four-point difference on my card have I been less sure of how the judges would have it.