i'd suggest re-watching the the 11th and certainly the 12th round. Morales was shaky and teetering on the edge of going down.
My point is he didnt cover up or go defensive. He stood there and took the shots and threw some of his own back for good measure.
yeah, agreed. great fight by a great fighter. but i had him winning 4, 5 rounds tops. As i said, i can understand someone scoring it a draw, but winning? noooo. some of the commentary was a bit over the top in favour of eric, i thought kellerman was going to start jerking off at one point.
You have to score on landed punches. About 5 rounds Maidana put in some good shots and was effective but overall Morales landed the cleaner punches. Maidana landed some good shots so not all of his aggression was ineffective though most of it was. Workrate is not a good indicator of who's winning, landed punches is plus Morales dictated most of the fight.
agreed totally but i did say, i thought Morales scored the cleaner punches from round 5 onwards. Maidana won round 11 and 12, no doubt but even though Morales scored well in the middle parts of the fight, at times, he was only fighting a third of any 1 round when he was catching Maidana well...but hey, it's subjective and only M.O
12th was pretty close actually but I thought Maidana got the better of exchanges. Usually Erik would fight after Maidana was leading but Morales fought smart and should've got no less than a draw imo. Maidana would come forward more often than El Terible but would get sloppy, headhunt, and miss a lot of punches which we as unofficial judges have to make a note of.
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by HOME BOX OFFICE, INC.. WTF!! NO! The video was great!
Morales looked like he was just gonna get TKOd until he woke up around the 5th. He won rounds until he began to fade late. There were some swing rounds even in the ones Morales was competitive in and he flat gave away at least 4 rounds. Maidana needed the last 2 rounds and I desperately wanted Morales to pull it out, but he just didn't. He surprised me by just being so competitve and letting his skills work, but really, Maidana is a good match-up for him in retrospect because of how crude he is. I really wouldn't favor Morales over anybody else in the top 5 or even top 10 at this point. Awesome fight though, truly deserves multiple viewings. If he had both eyes, he would have maybe pulled out a couple more rounds and won.