Dawson-Pascal. Pre Pascal, I was on the Bad Chad Awesome Dawson Bandwagon. His skill level was tight. After that, OMG...What Happened??????
So what does shot mean? A shell of your former self? Or unable to hang in with top 10 opposition regardless of how much you have lost of your peak value? Because I'd say the Morales at 140 hanging with Maidana was a shell of his former self, but he was descending from such a high level he was still able to hang in with high level guys in their prime.
He looked as though any Tijuana cab driver weighing 130lbs could have kicked his ass in late 2006. He didn't look even remotely world class. He looked more outta his depth than guys ranked like 250th in the division, the kind that aren't even good enough to be opponents in televised undercard squash matches. Granted, you can have "Pac is just that good" be your takeaway from that, sure. But they fought ten months before that. Pac didn't improve that much in ten months. A lot of it was Morales looking a ****-ton worse in November than in January. But the Morales who ran Chino and DSG close a few years later was p4p >>>>>>>>>>>> that November 2006 version. Shit's weird. He did this elastic thing from elite ATG to sucking ass back halfway up to 'fringe world class'. You rarely see that.
My theory is the constant weight cutting and violent ring wars sapped him of his vitality at a far too young chronological age. So by the 3rd Pac fight he was so far removed from what he once was. Then he took a retirement break and rejuvenated with rest. And upon his return he had some added vibrancy.
My four favorite fighters ever in order are as followed 1. Manny Pacquiao 2. Sergey Kovalev 3. Antonio Margarito 4. Erik Morales I've had to watch 3 of them undergo almost overnight meltdowns. They were superheroes to me and then in a blink of an eye they looked feeble. Why can't I pick fighters that undergo a normal decline whereby they show actual signs of steady decline. Instead of one day being god like and then the next day looking like my grandpa?
