When Erik Morales steps into the ring Saturday night, the titles of two champions named Chavez will be in his sights.
He will be out to take the 130-pound super-featherweight title from champion Jesus Chavez. If Morales can do that, he will equal the accomplishment of his boxing idol and fellow Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez by winning world championships in three different weight divisions.
In his understated manner, more so after his Spanish is translated into English, Morales acknowledges Julio Cesar Chavez as Mexico’s greatest fighter and says the chance to join him as an elite champion “is very important.”
At the same time, he said, “I fight for pleasure. I love fighting.”
The other Chavez, no relation to Julio Cesar Chavez, the man who will stand up to Morales Saturday in the MGM Grand Garden Arena, is well aware of his opponent’s achievements and ambition.
“Erik Morales wants to become the new Julio Cesar Chavez,” said Jesus Chavez, the Mexican-born champion who grew up in Chicago.
He can surely accelerate his own career by derailing Morales.
“I can make my mark if . . . when . . . I beat him Saturday night,” added Chavez, who is making the first defense of the 130-pound title he won last August in his Austin, Texas, hometown. “Morales is now most definitely the best Mexican fighter.”
In recent years, as Julio Cesar Chavez faded from the scene, Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera have approached his revered status as nemeses. They have fought each other twice, each winning a disputed decision. But while that remains Morales’ only loss, Barrera has since been annihilated in the ring by rising star Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines.
Morales, a dominant champion at 122 and 126 pounds, says moving up in weight to seek the 130-pound crown was a natural progression. Even though he made nine title defenses at 122, he said, “My body was too big to keep in that division.”
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Now, after fighting eight bouts to win and retain various 126-pound titles, Morales said he has grown easily into 130 pounds at age 27. Rather than struggling with his weight, he said he was “giving freedom to my body to do things I have been doing since I was a little kid.”
Indeed, the slender slugger who has 34 knockouts in his 45 victories does not look that much bigger than when he became a professional prizefighter at age 16 in 1993.
But the array of championship belts he has accumulated symbolizes how far he has come from his childhood days in a Tijuana barrio.
Born in a building that housed not only his home but an appliance repair shop and a boxing gym, Morales began boxing at age 5 under the tutelage of his father, Jose, who was a 112-pound pro fighter in the 1970s.
Jose Morales is still his son’s manager and trainer. And Erik Morales, married with three children, still maintains an office and has renovated the gym in the building where he was born.
But now he stays in his childhood neighborhood by choice, not necessity. His payday for Saturday’s bout is $700,000, while champion Chavez gets $600,000. Each fighter tipped the scales at the 130-pound limit at Friday’s weigh-in.
Bob Arum promotes both fighters and feels confident theirs will be a battle of warriors’ wills.
Of Morales, whom he has known longer, Arum said, “He personifies toughness. I’ve never seen a dull Erik Morales fight.”