Is Marquez sufficiently old enough for Pacquiao to finally beat him

By Boxing News - 10/24/2011 - Comments

Image: Is Marquez sufficiently old enough for Pacquiao to finally beat himBy Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao has fought Juan Manuel Marquez twice before and received a 12 round draw and a 12 round split decision win. However, many boxing fans disagree with both of those results and see Pacquiao as having lost both fights with Marquez. I’m one of those fans. I saw Pacquiao getting pretty well dominated.

Now Pacquiao is facing Marquez for a third time after waiting four years from the last time they fought. The difference here is that Marquez is now 38, older, slower and slightly thick in the midsection. Marquez isn’t the fighter he was back in 2008, and that might give Pacquiao just enough of an advantage for him to get a non-controversial decision this time.

Besides Marquez being almost 40-years-old, he’s also fighting two divisions above his weight class in fighting Pacquiao at welterweight at a catchweight of 144 lbs. We’ve already see that Marquez can’t fight out of his weight class when he ballooned up in weight to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. using a catchweight of 143 lbs. Now we’re going to see it again, only Marquez is two years older from his one-sided 12 round decision loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2009.

Now Pacquiao gets a chance to finally prove that he can beat Marquez. But where is there a victory when your opponent is no longer the fighter he once was and is nearly 40? We just saw Pacquiao fight a 40-year-old in his last fight against Shane Mosley last May.

As you would guess, Mosley was far too old to put up much of a fight against Pacquiao. Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, thought the Mosley-Pacquiao fight would be good for bringing in pay per view numbers. And sure enough, it brought in a respectable 1.4 million viewers. However, it also angered a lot of those viewers who paid $60 to see a mismatch between a young guy and old one. Now we’re about to see Pacquiao face another 40-ish fighter in Marquez, and this time the fight is $54.95 on PPV.

Is Marquez old enough for Pacquiao to beat this time? I suspect yes, but it probably won’t be the knockout that Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach are hoping for. They want to be validated as being the best, but that’s not going to happen even against an old man in Marquez. Marquez is so much of a better fighter than Pacquiao that even though he’s old guy now, he’ll still make Pacquiao look silly in this fight.



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