Pacquiao-Bradley 24/7 episode 1: Manny blames his poor performance against Marquez on underestimating him

By Boxing News - 05/20/2012 - Comments

Image: Pacquiao-Bradley 24/7 episode 1: Manny blames his poor performance against Marquez on underestimating himBy Chris Williams: I got a kick out of listening to Manny Pacquiao make excuses for his poor performance against Juan Manuel Marquez last November during last night’s Pacquiao/Bradley 24/7 episode on HBO. Pacquiao said “I saw Marquez, he’s bigger than me, so I’m surprised of his body, you know,. I’m just underestimating him. It’s a good lesson for me.”

Underestimating him? That’s a weird way of complimenting Marquez for a job well done. However, if it was truly a case of Pacquiao underestimating Bradley, then what’s Pacquiao’s excuse for fight #1 and #2 against Marquez, where Pacquiao had just as many problems as he did in the third fight? Was Pacquiao underestimating Marquez in those fights too? I think it’s hogwash. Pacquiao didn’t struggle against Marquez because he underestimated him. Pacquiao struggled because he doesn’t do well against the guy because he’s simply a better overall fighter with his technique.

Pacquiao is a fast guy with power, but he’s lacking big time in fundamentals, and his trainer Freddie Roach has made precious few inroads in changing Pacquiao’s many flaws. When you take a fighter like Marquez who has great skills and put him in with a fighter that gets by with speed and power alone, Marquez is going to do what he did to Pacquiao in their three fights. Underestimating is the last thing that I would think of in describing what happened to Pacquiao last November. How can Pacquiao underestimate a guy that handled him well in their first two fights?

If Pacquiao couldn’t get motivated for the third fight after having struggled BADLY in the first two bouts, then that’s on him. But I see Pacquiao as making excuses for his poor performance, and I can only wonder what his excuses would be if and when they fight for a fourth time and Pacquiao looks just as bad.

Pacquiao said “If I don’t create the action, it will be boring.”

If Pacquiao didn’t create the action, he loses big time. I saw him losing all three fights anyway, but if he didn’t create the action, Pacquiao would lose every round of every fight. He has little choice but to create the action because he can’t box with Marquez from the outside because Marquez is the better boxer. That’s what Pacquiao should have said instead of talking about why he was forced to create the action.

Pacquiao continued “We have a lot of things missing in training in that fight because in that training we don’t apply the plyometrics, so I just underestimated him. It’s not going to happen again.”

The plyometrics wouldn’t have saved Pacquiao. Did Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Jack Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano and Floyd Patterson use plyometrics? Of course not. Pacquiao could have done plyometrics exercises 24/7 until he blue in the face, and Marquez STILL would have countered him all night long. It’s about skills, not brute strength. Pacquiao needs to understand that because he’s not going to beat a guy like Marquez by being stronger than him or faster than him. It’s got to be skills, and for some reason Marquez has the better skills in my view.



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