By Gabriel F. Cordero
Ring legend Erik ‘Terrible’ Morales will no longer be the trainer of former world champion Jaime Munguía, but will remain as an adviser to the Munguía team. After four years working with Munguia, Morales will now dedicate himself to his work as head of the Institute of Sports and Physical Culture of Baja California.
The 26-year-old Munguia could train with Freddie Roach for his next fight, possibly against Edgar Berlanga in November.
I love Morales, but I don’t think it would at all hurt Munguia to expand and increase his boxing repertoire and technical abilities.
Exactly!
It was about time to try a new trainer. Roberto Garcia is the one that comes to mind to fill this position because of his style and language; another one could be Eddy Reynoso, who could improve Munguia’s defense and fight approach.
Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera are the hosts of an excellent show that is available as a podcast. The show brings so many insights and anecdotes about past and present fights with legendary guests (active and already retired) like Miguel Cotto, Pacquiao, Nacho Beristain, Julio Cesar Chavez, and Finito Lopez. For instance, in one of the shows, a fan sent a question to Barrera about the punch that he threw when Marquez was down. Barrera gave the answer, “I truly regret that I didn’t hit him well; it was just a glancing blow. I should have given him a good “putazo” to say later; that is fine (about the point deduction), but I didn’t, and that upset me more. Barrera gave credit to Salvador Sanchez’s greatness for this reason: He was too young for the type of opposition he faced and the way he defeated them. It is a really enjoyable show.
How cool is that, Burucho! After all these years those two end up working together; sitting around talking about all the great old times.
What’s the name of the podcast?
Un round mas (one more round)
Munguia vs Berlanga would be an awesome matchup, I believe they will go all out on power punches and this fight could end early by KO or TKO
I wonder if this split was amicable. Munguia needs a trainer who will work to improve this deficiencies and tweak his offensive.
I would think it was amicable if he’s willing to remain on as an advisor. To me it just sounds like Morales just got a really good job that he couldn’t turn down and won’t have much time to train a world class fighter anymore.
It looks that way, sometimes they may say something like that to give the appearance of a amicable split, but it was everything, but amicable; I am more inclined to say that this one was amicable.
If you ask me, I would prefer the new trainer of Jaime Munguia to focus on developing his defensive skills such as Ronnie Shields.
I dont think the style of coaching of Robert Garcia would work on developing Jaime weaknesses, my worthless two cents 🙂
I would definitely agree. His biggest flaw is definitely his defense and you RARELY see guys get better at defense throughout their career. Buddy McGirt is pretty good at that though, maybe he would be a decent choice as well.
Yes, I agree, Buddy will definitely be a good choice, and unfortunately true. Very few are able to make minute changes.
MAB changed his style from coming forward to counterpuncher.
Sadly I remember Israel Vasquez, lost one eye, and poor vision on the other. Nowadays, few remember him.
The Surgeon Randall, I didn’t know he suffered from pugilist dementia.
Hitting and getting hit, while is a crowd pleasing style, it shortened boxers fighting years and quality of lives.
I hope Munguia won’t be one more added to the long list
Randall..was underrated… good fighter,.very good right hand puncher with good ring IQ.,that right hand that put Chavez down was masterful….
I never thought or seen him getting too much punishment.
Lucie, I don’t know how much English Munguia knows or how much Spanish Ronnie Shields speaks, but I believe verbal communication is essential to helping a boxer reach a higher level. That is why I was thinking of Reynoso and Garcia, and also Salas, as someone mentioned.
Language barrier can be an impediment,
Morrell is learning English and it seems has coped well with Ronnie.
Pacquiao when he started fighting in the US made a good working relationship with Roach.
JCC Jr at some point worked with Roach.
Many non English speakers are able to overcome a,language barrier and work with an English coach, sometimes they use someone who can translate until the fighter has enough language skills
I actually remember Munguia being interviewed on the last Golden Boy show in Mexico and they mentioned that he had problems speaking English, but he was understanding it better. I think Beto Duran was interviewing him and mentioned it, so I think he’s working on it.
Also, I’ve seen it work where you have a trainer with a second who is acting as a translator as well. Buddy, for example, trains Janibek and he speaks to him and his assistant immediately translates it for him. It probably actually helps not to overload a fighter with too much info in between rounds because it takes a little longer, imo.
In one episode of the podcast (or several) morales says that he insists on teaching jaime munguia more defense (keeping his defense stand) (la guardia alta) but jaime insists only on offense and he (morales ) sometimes feels angry about this. Do you think he can learn defense at this point of his career with freddie ¿?
Unfortunately no, but I hope he does, for his own sake
I think it’s rare that people who you look at when they’re younger and say that they have defensive problems grow up to be solid defensively when they’re older. You can look at guys like Pacquiao and Gatti (with Buddy in his corner) who did improve at times, but at others not so much and I can’t really think of too many others at all (maybe Michael Moorer, but he changed pretty much his entire game when he got to heavyweight).
I think that a great option would be Salas.
Munguia vs Berlanga would be a classic firefight, both don’t know the word defense
Tiajuana’s greatest. Fare thee well.
Morales knows a lot of boxing and he knows that Munguía can’t go far away in boxing