Action Heroes: Marcos Maidana vs. Erik Morales Fight Card Pay-Per-View Review

The "Action Heroes" pay-per-view fight card was another Golden Boy Promotions hit. It had a good lineup of stacked action-packed fights from top to bottom.

On the free televised portion of the card was the veteran retired comeback fight of Nate "Galaxy Warrior" Campbell vs. undefeated rising prospect Danny "Swift" Garcia.

Garcia was far too much for the older, should-have-stayed-retired Campbell, winning an easy, comfortable unanimous decision. Garcia may need to work on his conditioning and stamina for he gave the much older Campbell some opportunities in the later rounds and his punches seemed to lose their snap as well.

Then was the Paul Malignaggi vs Jose Miguel Cotto fight, which was at the welterweight limit. Paulie has spent most of his career at 140 but now seems to desperately want to make a new name for himself at 147.

Unfortunately, much like most of his fights, he can at the very best outbox his opponents on points. He lacks the true power to stop or even hurt most fighters hence why he has only a 18 percent KO rate.

Taking on Miguel Cotto's less popular, less talented and less dangerous brother Jose Miguel Cotto is probably not the type of fight that one should be taking in order to prove their worth at 147.

Like most of Malignaggi's fights there was very little excitement, for again he pretty much outboxes and dances around his opponents to a comfortable decision as he did in this fight as well. Probably the highlight of this fight was when his shoe came off, much like when he needed an emergency haircut in his previous fight.

One final thought on this fight was it was on the free televised portion of the pay-per-view card. You can make your own opinion on that.

Then came probably the biggest bomb, dropping shocking news that boxing has had in such a long time when the James Kirkland vs. Nobuhiro Ishida came.

James Kirkland, who recently was released from prison, was on a very fast-paced track to knocking out everyone in his way back to the top of the game. He knocked out both of his opponents with ease within the first two rounds, fighting twice in March before this fight with Ishida.

Prior to this fight, both Jim Lampley and Max Kellerman talked about how Ishida was purposely chosen to make Kirkland look really good by not having any knockout power and by not being an accomplished fighter by the age of already 35 with only seven knockouts on his record. (Still a higher KO percentage rate than Paul Malignaggi).

Ishida came in with a big goofy smile on his face; his fighter profile photo even had a goofy smile on it as well. But now as we all know Ishida had every right to have a big goofy smile on his face, for he knew what none of us knew and that was he was going to knock out the undefeated, invincible wrecking machine who was highly underestimating him.

Ishida knocked Kirkland down three times with much ease, causing the fair but firm Joe Cortez to stop the fight. In fact, if you watch the video Cortez even jumps on Kirkland and lays on top of him for some very strange reason, and then presses his body against Kirkland up against the ropes.

Ishida's enormous upset win erupted the fight fans forums, having everyone and their mother on YouTube searching what they had to see with their own eyes to believe.

No one believed in Ishida so much that they had to improvise and get a last minute Japanese translator for the postfight interview, who did a horrible job since he could barely speak English/Japanese himself.

Ishida's upset was the constant theme and subject for the remainder of the night, having both Lampley and Kellerman constantly talking about it and drawing parallels, and even Oscar De La Hoya reportedly said he will from now on feature a super underdog of 30 to 1 odds on every Golden Boy pay-per-view card from now on.

I personally was hoping for Friday's fight with Japan's biggest fighter Hasegawa to win a big moral victory for the people of Japan against Gonzalez, but he fell short, being knocked out. Ironically Japan's unknown underdog Ishida provided that huge moral victory for the people of Japan with his upset-of-the-year performance. The MGM grand cheered loud for the overnight sensation as he waved to the crowd.

Then came the fight of the night that most fans were looking forward to. Robert "The Ghost" Guerrero vs. Michael Katsidis. This fight opened up with high energy and excitement as Katsidis began to taunt Guerrero by screaming into the referees microphone yelling, "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?!!!"

Guerrero was all poker faced out as he stared down back at Katsidis and began what would become an exciting 12 rounds of out-classing, out-pointing and even trading and out-slugging the slugger.

There was a highly controversial knockdown overlooked early in the fight as referee Mora did not rule it a knockdown, even though Guerrero did have one of his gloves touch the canvas.

Katsidis was deducted points twice for low blows in the eighth round and referee Mora seemed to give in to the criticism of doing that by deducted Guerrero a point as well in the ninth round for low blows as well.

Guerrero pulled an impressive Action Heroes type of performance in earning a unanimous decision over Katsidis. Many were calling for the Juan Manuel Marquez fight almost as soon as this fight was coming to an end.

Guerrero should be able to land the big super fights now with this big win and big performance.

Finally in the main event, the legendary Erik Morales came into the ring to prove all the doubters wrong as he put on the comeback performance of a lifetime against the dangerous prime knockout sensation Marcos Maidana.

In the first round Morales looked horrible, shots just covering up the shots coming towards him by Maidana. Morales even suffered a black eye that closed his eye up completely forcing him to fight with only one good eye and only half of his vision for the remaining 11 rounds.

Maidana seemed to be either holding back a bit out of respect for fighting a legend such as Morales or he was attempting to fight a new more complete fighting style with his new trainer who ironically was Marco Antonio Barrera's trainer.

Maidana still being aggressive won most of the early rounds with ease. It was not until about the fifth round that Morales began to really open up and become his former young prime self trading and beating the younger Maidana to the punch.

Morales became alive for much of the second half of the fight, outboxing and out-classing Maidana and even hurting him, wobbling him at times.

Much of the crowd at the MGM Grand were now awake and excited for the older veteran legend catching his second wind and channeling his old prime self.

Harold Lederman, HBO's official ringside judge, scored the fight a draw 114-114 as much of the crowd and home viewers did or even having Morales winning it by a round or two.

The official judges scored it: a majority decision for Maidana 116-112 while the other two had it 114-114.

Morales proved most of us wrong that he could in fact be a force once again. However this also says a a lot about Maidana and that is a superior technical boxer/puncher with a decent chin can still beat him.

This in my eyes not only takes away a bit from Maidana's stock but it also takes away from Amir Khan's stock as well. For his best career-defining win is over Maidana, a fight in which he had some very troubling moments where he almost got knocked out.

I'll even go as far as saying that I now slightly favor Tim Bradley to defeat Khan when they finally meet in the ring.

Where should Maidana go from here? I think he looks best and performs best against an aggressive fighter who trades and comes forward towards him so Devon Alexander or Lucas Matthysse would make a great fight.

Morales should fight Marco Antonio Barrera one last final time and make that big money and ride his horse into the Tijuana sunset.

Word came out that Oscar De La Hoya stated that profits from "Action Heroes" pay-per-view were going to help the Japan disaster relief fund. If this is indeed true, then Oscar De La Hoya is indeed an Action Hero himself.

Also I'll even go as far as saying I am for once very happy in spending that 50 bucks for this pay-per-view card...even though I watched it at this chick's house and made her pay for it. WINK.

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