Pacquiao says he lost to Marquez because of overconfidence: Is this a weak excuse?

By Boxing News - 01/01/2013 - Comments

marquez111By Chris Williams: It’s interesting to see some of Manny Pacquiao’s excuses for his 6th round knockout loss to Juan Manuel Marquez last month. Pacquiao says that he simply got “Overconfident” while trying to take Marquez out in the last seconds of the 6th round. I think this isn’t giving Marquez any real credit for the skill that he showed in timing Pacquiao.

Marquez didn’t win that fight because of anything that different that Pacquiao had done. If you look at all of Pacquiao’s fights he always rushes in against his opponents looking to nail them with fast combinations. The difference here is that Marquez simply waited, saw the opening and nailed Pacquiao with a right hand with a lot of power behind it.

Marquez had been landing those same right hands in the three previous fights against the Filipino, but the difference in this fight is that he finally the power behind his punches to KO him. But it had nothing to do with Pacquiao being overconfident, because he always fights the same way. If you watch any of his previous fights, Pacquiao always used the head feints while storming forward against his opponents.

If you look at some of the recent sparring he did to get ready for the fourth fight with Marquez, Pacquiao did the same thing when attacking his opponents by leaving himself open. Pacquiao didn’t lose the fight because of overconfidence. He lost because he didn’t have the talent to beat Marquez, not with Marquez punching like a mule kicks.

Marquez’s power has really improved dramatically and he was able to finally make Pacquiao pay for his poor defensive skills. That’s the difference in this fight. Had Marquez not increased his punching power with help from his superb strength coach Angel Heredia, I have no doubts that Marquez would have likely lost by another controversial decision.

You can’t give Heredia enough credit for increasing Marquez’s punching power for this fight because he was a much better puncher than he’d ever been before. You could see the difference in power with each punch he landed in the fight. He much better power and there was no way Pacquiao was going to be able to take 12 rounds of right hands from Marquez. The knockout was going to come unless Pacquiao could have gotten a cut stoppage win due to the bad cut on Marquez’s nose.



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