Roach: Marquez was punching harder than he had in previous fights with Pacquiao

By Boxing News - 12/09/2012 - Comments

Image: Roach: Marquez was punching harder than he had in previous fights with PacquiaoBy Chris Williams: One of the things that trainer Freddie Roach and his fighter Manny Pacquiao weren’t expecting last Saturday night was the extra power that Juan Manuel Marquez was punching with. Roach didn’t realize ahead of time that Marquez had not only developed more muscles through weight lifting, he had also developed more power on his shots.

That power led to Marquez knocked Pacquiao out cold in the 6th round in a win that extended Roach’s losing streak for his top fighters.

Roach said at the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 post fight press conference last night “I think he’s [Marquez] punching harder. His body is very well-developed…He’s very strong, very physical in there, A lot more than he was before. I think his punching was improved, yes.”
It’s too bad Pacquiao had to find out the hard way how much extra power that Marquez had because he should have known.

I could tell right off the bat that Marquez was punching with more power than he had in the first fight because you could see the strength in his shots when he was landing. He just looked a lot stronger than Pacquiao even when he wasn’t loading up with his shots. Marquez just had really heavy hands with everything he was landing.

When he hit Pacquiao with that looping right hand that knocked him down in the 3rd, it was pretty shocking the power in that shot because it landed with a loud impact. I’ve seen Marquez land those same shots against Pacquiao and other fighters in the past before he started weight lifting, and he didn’t have the same affects. He had power, but not that kind of power that he had last night.

Roach made it easy for Marquez because it was like bringing the fly to the spider with Roach’s crazy idea of having Pacquiao come straight at the powerful Marquez. It was a really bad idea for Roach to push his fighter into fighting that kind of fight.



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