By Chris Williams: Through his two fights with Manny Pacquiao, Juan Manuel Marquez has noticed that Pacquiao does well as long as you don’t put pressure on him and attack him. But when you throw a lot of punches and are constantly coming forward, Pacquiao struggles.

Of course, his opposition has to possess some talent otherwise it doesn’t matter how often they attack Pacquiao, he’ll win. We’ve seen this recently in some of the fights where Pacquiao has been put in with slow come forward types if fighters but guys who are clearly on the downward slopes of their careers and not what they used to be.

“Pacquiao doesn’t want to be attacked,” Marquez said during the recent Pacquiao-Marquez 24/7 episode 1 on HBO last Saturday night. “I’m a fighter who uses intelligence. Who attacks, who counter-punches, and uses combinations that others haven’t used. I think my style is difficult for him. We thought we won the second fight. We won by two or three points. To have won those two fights would put me where Pacquiao is now.”

Marquez is absolutely correct. If you look at Pacquiao’s two earlier fights with Marquez as well as Pacquiao’s first fight with a non-weight drained Erik Morales, you’ll noticed that Pacquiao completely stopped punching when he was getting attacked by those two fighters. Pacquiao would just cover up and wait until Marquez and Morales would stop punching before he’d blindly run after them throwing punching while running forward. Pacquiao didn’t look comfortable when he was getting hammered and showed zero ability to throw counter punches.

Marquez has studied those fights with a fine tooth comb and knows how vulnerable Pacquiao. He knows he can beat him. Pacquiao has done well as of late, but look at who his promoter Bob Arum is putting him in with: Shane Mosley (40); Miguel Cotto after his beating from Antonio Margarito; Joshua Clottey, who just covered up all night long; Ricky Hatton, a wide open fighter who had to drop a ton of weight before the Pacquiao fight; And Margarito, who hadn’t looked the same since his fight with Cotto three years ago.

Pacquiao has been doing well but his promoter is picking out guys that Pacquiao can succeed against, while not putting him in against fighters that would likely whip him like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Sergio Martinez. Those fights could and should have happened already, and yet all we’re seeing is Pacquiao matched against a lot of vulnerably arguably past their prime fighters from his same Top Rank stable.