Pacquiao Defeats Marquez On Questionable Decision

By Manuel Perez: For the second time in four years, WBC super featherweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (48-4-1, 35 KOs) finds himself on the losing end of a dreadful decision, this time a 12-round split decision loss to Filipino star Manny Pacquiao (46-3-2, 35 KOs) on Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The final judges’ scores were 115-112 for Pacquiao, 112-115 for Marquez and 114-113 for Pacquiao.

I personally had Marquez winning 8 rounds to 4, but with the knockdown of Marquez in the 3rd round, it came out to 7-5. Many other sports writers at both ringside and on the internet are in agreement with me about the outcome being a horrible decision.

I can’t say that I’m particularly surprised, though, because Pacquiao is the bigger named fighter and it would have taken almost a miracle performance by Marquez to pull out a decision, even though he was the WBC super featherweight champion going into the bout and should have had that going for him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough cache to get the win, but for most people that saw the fight, they know really won the fight, so I consider Marquez the people’s champion.

As far as the action goes, Marquez dominated the first round against Pacquiao, hitting him with blistering combinations and hard right hands. In the second round, Marquez staggered Pacquiao with a big left hook at the end of the round. Fortunately for Pacquiao, the punch landed just as the round was ending, for if it had occurred a little earlier, I have no doubts that Marquez would have stopped Pacquiao in the round. Both the first and second round easily went to Marquez, who showed his superior boxing skills as he pounded Pacquiao with beautiful shots.

In the third round, Pacquiao landed a left hand with his eyes closed, and dropped Marquez. It was a lucky punch, for he had no idea where Marquez was when he threw the punch and lucked out when it connected. 99 times out of 100, that punch would have missed by a mile, but this time he got lucky and dropped Marquez. However, Marquez was having none of it, and immediately went after Pacquiao upon getting up and almost succeeded in knocking him down with a left hand before the bell sounded ending the round.

Marquez played it safe in the 4th round, enabling Pacquiao to win the round by default. Marquez wanted to make sure his head was clear, so he stayed away and thus narrowly lost the round due to inactivity. He did land a few nice right hands, but Pacquiao landed more of his trademark left hand shots.

In the 5th and 6th rounds, Marquez came storming back, winning both rounds with impressive combinations as he tagged Pacquiao with a large number of punches. Pacquiao, who still fights wild even though he’s improved somewhat now that he uses his right hand, was no match for Marquez in these two rounds, and looked almost amateurish in comparison to the highly skilled Marquez.

In the 7th round, Pacquiao came charging in and clashed heads with Marquez, opening up a cut over his right eye and bloodying his nose in the process. More than anything up to that point, as it turned out, this was Pacquiao’s best weapon of the fight. As soon as the headbutt occurred, Marquez slowed his offense down dramatically, essentially giving Pacquiao the round.

Marquez retook control of the fight in the 8th and 9th rounds, attacking Pacquiao with superb combinations and cutting him on the side of his right eye. However, by late in the 9th round, Marquez’s cut had worsened and was bleeding into his eye, making it difficult for him to see properly. He finished the round squinting out of his right eye from all the blood.

Pacquiao had a good 10th round, mostly because Marquez was taking it easy in the round trying to spare additional punishment to his injured eye. This allowed Pacquiao to land a number of left hands. Still, however, Marquez had a late surge in the round and landed two and three punch combinations to the head of Pacquiao.

In the 11th and 12th rounds, it was all Marquez, as he took the fight to Pacquiao and totally dominated the action. Not only was he controlling the fight, but he was backing Pacquiao up and outlanding him by a considerable margin. In no way were either of the rounds close, for Pacquiao was taking serious punishment during and only rarely got a shot in his own self.

In the end, Marquez was too strong, too skilled and by far the superior fighter. To be sure, he won the fight by at least a 7 rounds to 5 margin, but if you wanted to be especially kind to Pacquiao, you could call it a draw, although that wouldn’t be telling the true story of the fight. However, to give Pacquiao the decision based on the fiction of him winning the 12th round of the fight, as far as I’m concerned, is ridiculous and a great disservice to Marquez. I do hope they fight again sometime in the future, for I think Marquez needs to set the record straight by beating Pacquiao once again in front of a world wide audience. As it is, he’s already done it twice in my view.