By Chris Williams: I don’t know what happened to Manny Pacquiao (54-4-2, 38 KO’s) but he doesn’t look the same since his fight with with Juan Manuel Marquez last November in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao won that fight by a very controversial 12 round majority decision but few people agreed with the two judges that gave Pacquiao the margin of victory.

In Pacquiao’s very next fight after his “win” over Marquez, Pacquiao looked ancient in getting beaten by a hobbling Tim Bradley last June. Pacquiao went from being able to hop around the ring for three minutes of every round against Marquez to a slow and old looking fighter that couldn’t cut off the ring, couldn’t fight hard for more than 30 seconds, and couldn’t pull the trigger often with his shots. So what happened to Pacquiao? What did Marquez do to Pacquiao for him to turn into a slow, plodding fighter seven months later against Bradley? I don’t know but maybe it was all the head shots that Marquez landed in that fight with Pacquiao.

Sometimes when a fighter gets hit too much in one fight, they’re never quite the same again as they once were. This was a whole different Marquez that Pacquiao fought last time out. Marquez put on a lot of muscle and was a lot stronger than he’d ever been before.

Having a big, strong guy like Marquez hitting him over and over again might have been something that took wear out of Pacquiao. In Pacquiao’s wins over Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto, Antonio Margarito and Joshua Clottey, Pacquiao really didn’t get hit all that much because he was always the one doing the landing. But against Marquez last November, Pacquiao was getting tagged frequently at a high rate the entire fight.

By the end of the bout, Pacquiao’s face looked swollen and I lost count of all the times he was hit with big shots that whip lashed his head around. Did Marquez mess Pacquiao up in that fight to where he wasn’t the same fighter when he moved on to his next fight? I don’t know, but I do think Pacquiao wasn’t his old self when he faced Bradley. That was like an imposter Pacquiao. Physically, Pacquiao was there, but the conditioning, speed and activity level was way down.