De La Hoya: “Marquez will beat Mayweather”

By Dave Lahr: In Oscar De La Hoya’s weekly blog, he’s predicting that Juan Manuel Marquez (50-4-1, 37 KO’s) will beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. (39-0, 25 KO’s), giving Floyd his first loss of his career in doing so. De La Hoya feels that the two years that Mayweather has been out of the ring, along with Floyd’s rib injury will lead to Marquez, 36, pulling off the upset at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

De La Hoya says that removing the rib injury and time off from the equation, Marquez would still probably win because his style is “well-suited for Mayweather.” De La Hoya thinks that Mayweather will want to prove that he’s an exciting fighter and the only way he can do that is by standing directly in front of Marquez, the smaller fighter, and trading shots with him.

De La Hoya sees that working well for Marquez. De La Hoya points out that Marquez has good hand speed and isn’t slow like some people think he is. De La Hoya mentions Marquez’s two fights with Manny Pacquiao. Marquez doesn’t throw a lot of punches like Pacquiao, and thereby doesn’t leave himself as vulnerable as Pacquiao does.

De La Hoya believes that Mayweather is starting to feel his age now that he’s turned 30-years-old. Although Marquez is four years older than Mayweather at 36, De La Hoya feels that Marquez has had more time to get used to the aging process and is in a better position to counteract the effects of age compared to Mayweather, who is still not adapted yet.

De La Hoya says that Marquez won’t have to worry about Mayweather’s power, because he doesn’t hit hard. All that Marquez has to worry about, De La Hoya says, is Mayweather moving a lot on the outside, using his jab a lot. De La Hoya feels that Mayweather will feel a sense of pressure from the large Las Vegas crowd to trade shots with Marquez, and that Mayweather will also feel pressured because Marquez is the smaller fighter than he is.

No doubt, Mayweather will look bad if he’s seen running around the ring against a smaller fighter than him, treating him like a knockout artist. In this case, Mayweather could actually win the fight but emerge looking like a loser, turning off more boxing fans with his dull fighting style.

At the end of the day, De La Hoya thinks that Mayweather’s ego will fool him into thinking he can slug with Marquez and will make him take more chances than he normally takes. The time off that Mayweather took following his rib injury – July 18th to Sep 19th – has allowed Marquez to get stronger and has allowed his body to adapt to the muscles, De La Hoya says.

Marquez needs to use his jab and fight smart, and can win the fight if he uses his jab as much as De La Hoya did in the first seven rounds of his fight against Mayweather in 2007. However, Marquez needs to jab for all 12 rounds, not seven, De La Hoya says. Ultimately, De La Hoya thinks that Marquez will expose Mayweather by beating him.

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