Morales’ weight problem

The country’s foremost sports nutritionist, Sanirose Orbeta, believes that Erik Morales is in some kind of trouble by weighing in at 142 pounds last Friday with less than 30 days to make the super featherweight limit of 130.

Morales is to face Philippine boxing hero Manny Pacquiao for the third time at the 19,000-seater Thomas and Mack Center at Las Vegas on Nov. 18, Saturday evening (in Las Vegas) for the latter’s World Boxing Council (WBC) international super featherweight title. The promotion is aptly called the "Grand Finale." Morales won the first bout in March 2005 but Pacquiao came back to deal Morales his worst beating in the Mexican’s illustrious career in their return bout.

Morales had to undergo the weigh in procedure in compliance with WBC rules that fighters should not weigh more than 10 percent of the regulatory weight 30 days before the fight. Morales weighed in at the Melia Hotel in downtown Mexico City and tipped the scales at 142, just a shade below the limit of 143. Morales weighed 160 pounds last July when he signed the fight contract. In contrast, Pacquiao is down to a trim 135 pounds and should have no problems going down to 130 in the next few weeks.

Under the contract signed by both protagonists, any fighter who exceeds the 130 pound limit during the final weigh in, which is the night before the fight, will have to pay his opponent $500,000 for weighing in at anywhere from 130.1 to 131 pounds.

Despite what appears to be the difficult task of losing about half a pound a day, Morales is confident of making the weight and even proclaimed himself as "incredibly strong" during the press conference last week. The Mexican boxing icon has been undergoing a weight reduction and physical conditioning program at the Velocity Sports Performance in Los Angeles and no doubts gives credit to his seven-week training regimen for his feeling of invincibility.

Orbeta, however, has a different point of view that obviously favors Pacquiao. Orbeta says that losing 12 pounds in one month is "precarious because for boxers, we normally allow weight loss of anywhere from four to six pounds in one month." Obviously therefore, Morales will try to achieve twice more than what is normal and is therefore cramming and, is, in layman’s terms, crash dieting.

On the other hand, Orbeta believes that even if Pacquiao is experiencing weight problems at this time, the General Santos hero will not have any difficulty shedding the excess poundage since "he is a heavy sweater and can lose three to five pounds in a short period. He has active sweat glands and it’s easy for him to regain the five pounds he lost to make the weight."

Orbeta, whom I have the privilege of knowing in a personal capacity (she’s my nutritionist up to this time although I have been a bad patient by not seeing her for more than one year) and on an official basis when I was at the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), says that the sudden drop in Morales’s weight could impair his strength, mental ability, focus and overall performance.

"From a clinical point of view, it is possible for Morales to make the 130 pound limit on fight night but (the effort to lose weight rapidly) will weaken him. He will lack sodium, the correct nutrients and the different carbohydrates. He can make it only if he starves himself and that will weaken him because he will cut out meals when what you’re supposed to do is only to cut down, not cut out which is what he did the last time around," says the affable Orbeta.

Orbeta believes that the program that Morales is undergoing involves anthropometric measurements that determine the percentage of water and fat in relation to one’s weight.

Pacquiao ought to know how it feels to fight a losing battle against excess weight as fight time approaches. He himself has bitter memories (and certainly an aching body) of his loss to Thailand’s Medgoen 3K Battery in September 1999 when a series of body blows caused Pacquiao to visit the canvas like a sack of rice in the third round of his unsuccessful defense of his flyweight crown in Thailand. Pacquiao was almost dehydrated when he climbed the ring in a vain effort to make the 112-pound limit.

In December 1999, Pacquiao moved up to the super bantamweight division which has a weight limit of 122 pounds and defeated Reynante Jamili. Obviously Pacquiao had rapidly outgrown the flyweight division in less than eight months and skipped three weight categories before settling into the 130 pound super featherweight class.

In sharp contract to Morales’s situation, Pacquiao appears to be in razor sharp condition and is mentally prepared. I saw him briefly at the Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles on Oct. 14. I walked into the gym around 12:30 p.m. to await his arrival at 1 p.m. for his daily (except Sunday) three-hour workout up to 4 p.m. Also present was Dyan Castillejo of ABS-CBN doing a situationer on Pacquiao.

Manny walked in at 12:45 p.m., chatted with me briefly and posed for some photos before going into the dressing room. The moment he stepped out of the change room, he immediately climbed into the ring with trainer Buboy Fernandez and focused on the task at hand.

Since the time I had the opportunity of helping promote Pacquiao’s two fights in the late 90’s (the first one, his successful title defense against Mexico’s Gabriel Mira in May 1999 at the Araneta Coliseum under the banner of UNIPROM and the second one, a comeback fight, against Jamili at the Elorde Sports Complex in December 1999 for the benefit of the Philippine Sportswriters Association), I have never seen Pacquiao as fast and as powerful as when I saw him two Saturdays ago.

Pacquiao’s footwork was splendid and so was his hand speed. The sting in the combinations was at its strongest. If Morales is not in the best shape of his life, I do believe that, despite all the hype and the psywar his camp is engaged in, there is a strong possibility that he will get the beating of his life on Nov. 18. Pacquiao could send him into retirement, or at the very least get the Mexican to abandon the super featherweight division and move up one or two rungs to a higher division.