By Dan Ambrose: Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) says he’s thinking about retiring from boxing following his 12 round split decision loss to WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) last Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. If he does continue fighting, he’s not sure that he’ll ever agree to fight in Las Vegas again.
Marquez said to the LA Times when asked if he’ll continue fighting or retire “Retire.”
He was beaten by the following judges scores 115-113 for Marquez, 116-112, and 115-113 for Bradley.
A lot of boxing fans saw the rounds as very difficult to score because Bradley wasn’t doing much, and his punches lacked power. Marquez was pushing the fight, landing the harder, more meaningful shots. Bradley did out land Marquez by 11 punches overall in the fight, but many of those were jabs that were not even close to being as powerful as the shots that Marquez was landing in the fight.
Ideally, they should fight again to clear up the controversy, but that’s not going to happen. Bradley’s promoter Bob Arum will be moving him forward to fight one of the following Top Rank fighters: Manny Pacquiao, Brandon Rios, Mike Alvarado or Ruslan Provodnikov.
It won’t make Marquez look good if he retires off of this fight. If he wants to continue fighting, he just needs to be more selective in who he faces. Going up against a runner like Bradley was a bad idea from the start. All Marquez had to do was watch Bradley’s fight with Pacquiao last year to figure out how he would fight him. And when you have someone fighting like that, it makes it really subjective for the judges in trying to determine a winner. Do they give rounds to Bradley for landing his weaker jabs and using movement to avoid getting hit, or do they give it to the stronger puncher and the guy that is making the fight happen. There’s only one way of fighting someone like Bradley and that’s how Provodnikov did it might going right at him and forcing him to fight.
If Marquez is going to be stuck fighting Top Rank fighters, then it won’t be as good for him. If he could fight guys like Adrien Broner. Lucas Matthysse and Danny Garcia from Golden Boy Promotions, those would be good fights for him.
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