FOTW #18 Marco Antonio Barrera vs Erik Morales

Sometimes I think my concentration wanes, but I don't go back and check out the last 20-30 seconds to catch up because the judges at ringside can't do that and I think we're doing this as a kind of "experiment" to find out if judges are crooked or if fights are just hard to judge. At least I think we started off doing that and then found that we enjoy scoring the fights and seeing how others score them. Right now, unless something changes, I'm convinced that fights are hard to judge. There might have been some crooked scoring somewhere, but in the fights we've scored, after scoring them myself, I have a new respect for the judges. It does seem like we're seeing the fights more and more alike, practice maybe? I've never done much scoring of fights before so I feel like I'm getting better because of scoring 40-50 fights in the last few months.

We're close on these 3 fights and I'd guess that 90% of the rounds were close enough to score either way. It's amazing that we both had MAB up by 8 rounds total out of 36. I'm going to try to score the Frazier - Bonavena fight soon, that one should be interesting.

EDIT: just saw your other post, they were all entertaining, the first might have been the best, but the second was interesting seeing MAB in the first 4-5 rounds doing exactly what I didn't expect him to do, especially coming off the knockdown he scored in the last round of the first fight. I think I prefer MAB's style, but EM seemed to have the physical advantages in size, speed, length, etc. I though MAB set down on his punches more and went to the body more but EM had just as much heart and desire. Neither was going to break the other one. I think your breakdown of their strengths is about right. Good match up, I think that if the ref told them that they had to fight another 15 rounds at the end of the fight, they'd have done it. Neither would quit.

 

My tally for Morales - Barrera II was a draw:

EM: 1, 4, 5, 7, 10
MAB: 2 (barely--basically even), 6, 8, 9, 12
Even: 3, 11

Half the rounds in the fight were razor close though and could have legitimately been scored for either fighter, depending on one’s scoring criteria. Especially some of the rounds that I scored for Barrera (and the ones I scored even, obviously). Definitely not a robbery imo (unlike the first one, from what I remember). Have to say I wasn’t particularly impressed with the quality of the fighters or the fighting in this one. Both guys were ineffective offensively. The cat-and-mouse tactics took both men outside of their effective punching ranges for much of the fight and when they were in close, neither landed many meaningful punches with any real precision or consistency. Seemed like Morales tried to out-game plan Barrera by fighting a type of fight that wasn’t completely natural to him and in the process they sort of cancelled each other out in this fight.

 

Will try and score these in the next few days. Looking forward to rewatching, particularly the first one to see if it holds up against my memories of it.

 

Marco Antonio Barrera v Erik Morales 1

Here's my tally:
1 9-10 (close)
2 10-9
3 9-10 (close)
4 10-10
5 9-10 (close, terrific round)
6 9-10
7 10-9 (close)
8 10-9
9 10-9 (another excellent round)
10 10-9 (close)
11 9-10 (close)
12 10-8

Marco Antonio Barrera 115 - 113 Erik Morales

This was closer than I remembered it (how many times have we all said this in these threads?!). My memory was a clear win for Barrera but I actually had it even going into the final round. I gave Barrera round 12 even without the knockdown (which was obvious a bogus call by the ref) so I still had Barrera edging it, but only just. I had a lot of close rounds but in terms of clear rounds, I had Barrera 4-1 up so overall I think I had the right guy coming out on top.

A Morales win though doesn't feel like a robbery. He was the busier of the two and maintained a pretty constant punch output while Barrera looked more dangerous with his attacks and had Morales seemingly in trouble on a few occasions although never in such trouble that a stoppage seemed likely. A lot of Barrera's big flurries seemed to happened at the end of rounds but I was surprised how relatively reserved Barrera was in pulling the trigger at times.

It was a great fight and round 5 was as I remembered but round 9 also stood out for terrific action. Having watched Chacon-Boza 2 recently, that fight now feels like the gold standard for all action-filled 12 rounders. While this fight didn't quite match that one, it was still a heck of a fight.

 

So, we had pretty similar cards! Both even totals going into the last round with the 10-8 final round swinging it in Barrera's favour. We got to the same total in slightly different ways but we agreed on 7 of the 12 rounds (rounds 2,3,5,6,7,8 and 12)

We had different results for rounds 1,4,9,10 and 11:
Round 1 - I marked as close but gave Morales the edge whereas you scored a draw
Round 4 - You gave to Barrera but I scored a draw
Rounds 9,10 and 11 were where we disagreed. I had Barrera winning 2 of the 3 (rounds 9 and 10) with Morales taking the 11th, whereas you had Morales taking 9 amd 10 and losing 11. I marked rounds 10 and 11 as close on my card so not too surprised we came out with different scores there.

 

Bit late getting to this one, but hey, better late than never and all that jazz....

Like a lot of people, I felt Barrera was a little unlucky first time out (my old card had him winning 115-114) and revisiting the fight only cemented that feeling for me, as this time I had him an even wider winner at 116-113. And that's not counting the fraudulent 'knockdown' in the twelfth, either. Of course, it's still incredibly competitive and exciting with every viewing, and it was a close fight overall, but I can't see how anyone could have Morales winning it outright. Maybe a draw, but that's it.

Anyway, the rounds breakdown: Barrera won rounds 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 11 and 12 in my opinion. Morales rounds 3, 4, 7 and 10. I had the ninth as a 10-10. Morales probably controlled more of the ninth, but he was also hurt seriously towards the end and sent staggering. I guess if I had to score it to one of them, Erik would just about be my pick to close the overall margin, but I'd still make Barrera the better fighter over the full twelve.
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Previously, I've had Morales nicking the second fight by a wafer. This time, I had it a 114-114 draw - but with the caveat that he won his six rounds more clearly than Barrera won his. So I'd agree with what seems to be the consensus - this time, Lady Luck was on Barrera's side. I'd struggle to give him better than a draw, and he was a little lucky not to have a point deducted in round eight after pulling Morales' head down in a clinch and bundling him to the floor, given he'd already had a couple of warnings for low blows and a butt.

I think when Morales watches this fight back, he must kick himself a little bit over the last two rounds, because he seemed to be running out of steam a little, and it ultimately cost him the decision. I had Barrera winning rounds 1, 2, 3, 9, 11 and 12 on this viewing, the rest to Morales. But as I said, Morales generally won his rounds a little more impressively and if anyone should have got a (narrow) decision in their favour, it was him, not Marco.

Unfortunately haven't had time to watch the third one again. If I get round to it I'll stick my thoughts here.