Ariza: Pacquiao will take Marquez out by the 3rd!

By Boxing News - 10/24/2011 - Comments

Image: Ariza: Pacquiao will take Marquez out by the 3rd!By Chris Williams: It’s always nice to see the pearls of wisdom given by Manny Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza. He seems to be stuck on the belief that Pacquiao is going to just roll over challenger Juan Manuel Marquez on November 12th for some reason.

Ariza said this last Saturday on the Pacquiao-Marquez 24/7 episode 1: “I don’t see Marquez making it past the 3rd round.”

That sounds a lot like some of the predictions Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach has been making for ages when Pacquiao has been matched against in house Top Rank fighters Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto. Somehow, Roach always wrong and I suspect Ariza, a guy with much less boxing experience, will be just as wrong.

It’s hard to say what is going through Ariza’s mind to make him think Pacquiao can steamroll over Marquez when Pacquiao appeared to lose both of the first two fights against Marquez. But my guess is Ariza sees his valuable conditioning training with Pacquiao as the tipping point for why Pacquiao will suddenly dominate Marquez this time. I wonder if Marquez being 38 has anything to do with it?

I hate to be the one to break this to Ariza but Pacquiao isn’t going to be knocking Marquez out in the 3rd round. That’s not going to happen. If Pacquiao does score a knockout, it’ll happen much later in the fight with Marquez cut up, but no way will it be early against a fresh Marquez. That sounds like a really stupid prediction if you ask me, but I’ve already heard a lot of dumb ones about this fight so I’m not surprised.



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