Why MORALES ranks higher than BARRERA

You have to weigh up the following

MAB definately beat Morales at least 2 times despite Morales typically weighing 10lbs more than MAB in the ring

MAB beat Hamed and MkKinney, who are better than anyone Morales fought outside of MAB/Pacman

Morales beat Pacman and Junior Jones who both beat MAB.

They are both great fighters and very close but I rate MAB above Morales, he got the better of the series, and beat Hamed

 

Just because blind judges stole two wins from Morales, doesn't make Barrera better than Morales.

 

At 122lbs, I give Morales the edge, based on accomplishments at the weight. I scored the first fight for MAB, but it was only by a single point, so it hardly qualifies as highway robbery.

At 126lbs, I give the edge to MAB, simply because he, by and large, did better work against a higher quality of opponent. Irondically, I scored the second fight to Morales, by a 7-5 margin.

At 130lbs, it's a toss-up. Both fighters were able to partially unify, and a lot of my decision will depend upon how MAB fares against Pacquiao in the rematch. Head to head in the rubber match, by the way, I gave Barerra the edge, and, really, the best that Morales could have done that evening was a draw on my card. He just gave away too many of the early rounds.

So, I think these two are pretty much equal, both in terms of their head-to-head matchups, and in terms of their accomplishments, as well.

 

Your a Morales nuthugger. I'm probably not the only one who sees it.

 

I'm a 4-scoring criterias nuthugger. Ie I don't allow attempts to steal the round overule the work one fighter has done the rest of the round. There's absolutely no way Barrera deserved a win in the 1st fight. All 4 criteria were in favor of Morales in most rounds of the fight. Anyone who scored it otherwise is not sticking to standard criterias of scoring a fight.

 

I have it 2-1 Barrera. He won the 1st and 3rd fight in my opinion.

 

The thing about the first Morales-Barrera fight was that Morales was landing more and applying the pressure, but he was being hurt by Barrera's punches more than he was hurting Barrera. It's always hard in such situations to decide who is getting the best of it.

 

It's not like Morales was landing pity-pat punches either, he was landing a lot of clean hard punches that were staggering Barrera too. And the quantity of punches he landed during the round was such, that even if Barrera landed a couple of punches that hurt him, they were still not enough to push the scales toward Barrera. When you have fighter A convincingly dominating fighter B for 2:50 and then even if you had fighter A knocked down at the end, I'd still give the round either a 10-10 or only a 10-9 to fighter B.
Here's how Kazmarek describes such situation:

 

Morales was definitely landing decent shots from what I remember, good hard shots, but Barrera was taking them well. Barrera was throwing sporadically, but when he did he'd shake Morales up. Morales would then get re-energized and try to re-seize control of the fight by thorwing even more punches.

I can't give you specifics about the fight, because it's not fresh in my memory, but I do have my scorecard form it and I had a couple of even rounds in there. Perhaps they came in situations like I said, with Morales landing more, and then Barrera shaking Erik up.

At the end of the day it depends on how much store you put on being stunned or rocked by punches compared to good hard punches which don''t quite have the same effect.

 

I thought Barrera showed much better defense than Morales in their first fight, and he was landing more clean power punches. Some close rounds, and a very competitive fight. It was a very high paced affair, which are pretty hard to score at times. But Barrera was better in all areas than Morales.

Most people agree Barrera won the fight.

 

Barrera's punches might have staggered Erik somewhat, but in the end they didn't wear him down to the point of being stopped, they weren't hard or effective enough to, say, predict that Morales would be stopped had the fight been scheduled for 15 rounds, or had the bell not sounded in any of the rounds where Barrera's punches hurt Morales somewhat. If you understand what I mean. And during the rounds Morales wasn't just landing more, he was landing A LOT more than Barrera. I would estimate it to 10-40 punches in most rounds.

 

You having a laugh?

 

What much better defense? The only times Barrera was landing was in short spurts, where he'd land cleanly 2-3 punches and miss all the rest. Now compare that to Morales landing at will during the round TENS of punches. Then there's the skills each one was using for defense. Morales was using all kinds of defense, lateral movement (his footwork was brilliant, the way he came at Barrera or from Barrera at different angles), body movement, parry, blocking. Barrera was mostly using static block, covering himself up and just hoping that Morales' punches won't penetrate it (but they did get through a LOT). The advantage in defensive skills belonged to Morales both in quantity and quality.

 

Of course not. I watched the fight again like a couple of weeks ago, so my memories about it are still fresh.

 

On my card I had Barrera winning the first solely because of an erroneously called knockdown in the 12th and final round. It was a bad call but an impartial judge has to go with the referees decision.
114-113 Barrera

In the second fight of the series, Morales started stronger, but Barrera looked fresher and stronger down the stretch. The middle rounds were back and forth. Barrera rallied strong from the 11th round on but was unable to sway the early lead. Round 2 was even 10-10.
115-114 Morales

I have to rewatch the third. When I watched it last I had Morales winning by a wide margin, but in previous I had always scored it oppositely for Marco Antonio. This most recent one will go down in paper this time and will be my official record of the rubbermatch. :good