By Chris Williams: Conscious that he’s been unable to pick up wins in three previous fights despite out-boxing the Filipino each time, former four division world champion Juan Manuel Marquez (54-6-1, 39 KO’s) will be looking to knock Manny Pacquiao (54-4-2, 38 KO’s) in their bout for the WBO “Fighter of the decade” championship on December 8th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

As many boxing have know by know, Marquez has out-boxed Pacquiao in each of their three previous bouts but come up empty each time. Marquez has gotten better with each fight and the last fight a year ago was painfully obvious that Marquez deserved the win. However, the judges yet again gave the win to Pacquiao instead of the guy that had fought his heart out and dominated the vast majority of the fight. This time Marquez will be looking to leave the judges with nothing to do but watch the fight by knocking Pacquiao out to finish their four-fight rivalry.

Marquez said to RingTV “[I] will try to knock out [Pacquiao].” If that’s the case then Marquez needs to forget about aiming for the head because Pacquiao is pretty impossible to KO with head shots. Pacquiao can take head shots like no one else in boxing. His head just absorbs the shot and he doesn’t even need to pull away from the punches like a lot of fighters do in order to lessen the blow. Pacquiao can just take the shot full on without showing the slightest hint of being hurt or stung by the shot. Perhaps that is one of Pacquiao’s best qualities, his ability to take punishment to the head without being hurt or deterred.

No, the way that Marquez has to beat Pacquiao is by getting in close and working his body. Pacquiao has been stopped by a body punch earlier in his boxing career, and he was hurt in the Antonio Margarito fight with one as well. But it’s difficult to hit him there because he moves a lot, or at least he used to. Pacquiao also makes his opponents pay when they try to go to his body by hitting them with blistering fast combinations. For this reason Marquez is going to have to land his big body shots and then step back so that Pacquiao can’t fired off a half dozen shots in succession to work Marquez over. Pacquiao may be slowing down in terms of his footwork and punch volume, but you don’t want to stand directly in front of him after you land shots.