ERIC MOREL W12 (split) GERRY PENALOSA

Eric Morel got the decision, but Gerry Penalosa won the hearts of the fans in their bantamweight 12-rounder on Top Rank’s Latin Fury 13; Pinoy Power 3 PPV show in Las Vegas.

Penalosa fought valiantly and well in a remarkable performance for a veteran who will turn 38 in six months. The fearless Filipino was chasing Morel around the ring at times in the later rounds and he came very close to winning. Many rounds were closely contested and in the end the fight was one round on one card from being a draw, with scores of 115-113 for each fighter and a rather wide 116-112 in Morel’s favour.

The TV commentators went for Penalosa but I couldn’t separate the fighters: it was one of those nip-and-tuck bouts. Penalosa, bloodied from two cuts, landed the heavier punches and was the aggressor but the Puerto Rican Morel made slick moves and put in enough flashy flurries to convince two of the judges that he was boxing a winning fight.

Penalosa was surely the moral winner, though. He suffered two cuts after head clashes in the sixth round, and the slice over his left eye looked severe, but he assured the ringside doctor that he could fight on and proceeded to come on strongly in the second half of the bout. His body punches were clearly troubling Morel but he couldn’t land enough of them to slow his man down.

The nine-rounds hammering Penalosa suffered against the bigger Juan Manuel Lopez 10 months ago had not taken as much out of him as I feared might be the case. Penalosa didn’t look like a worn-out fighter at all. Morel, though, looked vulnerable under attack although at 34 he retains the speed of his younger years.

Penalosa wiped blood from his left eye and ploughed forward but Morel peppered him in spurts.

The fight came down to what the judges preferred, and Morel’s artful method got the nod over Penalosa’s pressure. It was a debatable decision but a case could be made for either man winning.

Penalosa suffered his fourth split decision loss in a world title fight. Some fighters don’t get the breaks. Penalosa is one of them.

Punching power decided the best fight of the night as featherweight contender Bernabe Concepcion survived a rocky last round to win a unanimous 10-round decision over Mario Santiago in another Philippines-Puerto Rico clash.

Wide scores of 98-91 and 97-92 in favour of the Filipino fighter did not reflect the competitive nature of the contest; judge Jerry Roth’s 96-93 score seemed closer to the fight I saw.

Concepcion tended to be excessively patient but generally he boxed well and at times even showed a flash of the Manny Pacquiao technique in which he landed punches and then slipped away in a disappearing-act move, but it was his bigger punching that won him the fight.

Santiago boxed well, jabbing and following with the straight left hand from his southpaw stance, but he was hurt every time Concepcion hit him with the right hand — and a flash knockdown suffered in the sixth round put the Puerto Rican boxer far adrift on points.

It was Santiago who finished the stronger man, though, as he backed up Concepcion and hurt him to the body in the last round. If Santiago had started to fight with this much intensity several rounds earlier he could have won, but he was too respectful of Concepcion’s firing power. Of course, if Santiago had been bolder earlier he could have walked into a big punch and got knocked out. We will never know.

The two main bouts were predictable mismatches, with Filipino junior featherweight Nonito Donaire blowing out the much smaller Mexican Manuel Vargas in the third and Mexican bantam Fernando Montiel disposing of comparative novice Ciso Morales of the Philippines with a left hook to the body in the opening round.

For me, although he didn’t win, Penalosa was the bloody but unbowed show-stealer.