By Eric Thomas: Manny Pacquiao (54-4-2, 38 KO’s) needs an impressive win tonight over Juan Manuel Marquez (54-6-1, 39 KO’s) to show that he’s still the top fighter that he once was. He may also need a win to keep his pay per view numbers at the high levels that they’ve been in the past.

After all, it’s hard to ask boxing fans to pay $59.99 to see you fight if you’ve lost your last two fights and aren’t looking like a PPV attraction. Pacquiao needs to come out and show his old form by blitzing the older 39-year-old Marquez early, and getting him out of there as fast as possible.

Marquez isn’t going to make it easy for Pacquiao, because he’s a great counter puncher and he’s not just the typical opponent that you pull in for a fight. Marquez has the chin, the boxing skills, and the knowledge of how to beat Pacquiao and that make him very hard to beat.

To be sure, Marquez hasn’t registered a win over Pacquiao in their three prior fights but he’s fought well enough to cause a great deal of controversy about those three wins among boxing fans. Pacquiao obviously doesn’t like fans doubting his wins and that’s one of the biggest reasons why Pacquiao chose to give Marquez another rematch rather than facing one of his promoters Bob Arum’s other fighters in his stable.

Pacquiao needs to take matters in his own hands tonight by giving Marquez a decisive defeat so that Marquez and boxing fans can’t stir up debate about the judges’ decision. Scoring a knockout isn’t going to be easy because Pacquiao hasn’t stopped anyone for the past three years since his 12th round knockout win over Miguel Cotto. When you have a fighter with that kind of drought in between knockouts, it suggests that something has changed in the fighters’ game for one reason another.

Pacquiao’s power is still good but he’s not as active, not as aggressive and not as mobile as he once was. The conditioning has been a big part of Pacquiao’s training camp for this fight but it’s unknown whether Pacquiao can get even more out of his body than he always has in previous camps. His trainer Freddie Roach said before the Tim Bradley fight that Pacquiao had his best training camp, yet after the fight Roach was saying the opposite, talking about distractions.