By Eric Thomas: Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) isn’t worried about the power of WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) in their fight this Saturday night at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Marquez has studied Bradley’s past fights and noted that he’s a weak puncher but that he’s fast.
Marquez is mostly concerned with being outworked by Bradley due to his ability to throw a lot of fast combinations.
This is why Marquez has focused more on his speed in training camp than his power like he did in his last fight with Manny Pacquiao.
Marquez told the Boxing Channel “Pacquiao’s speed is with power punches. Tim Bradley’s speed is with no power punches.”
Marquez rates Bradley as having a lot of hand speed, but he doesn’t see him as being nearly as dangerous as Pacquiao because he doesn’t have the required power to make him a real threat.
It’s still going to be difficult for Marquez to match Bradley’s speed even though he’s been working on it a lot. Bradley is simply faster, and he moves better around the ring. Marquez is naturally slower, and given his advanced age, he’s not going to be able to beat Bradley by trying to match his speed.
Marquez has to press the fight and corner Bradley to get him in a position where he’ll fight out of the spot to get away. Marquez’s superior power should give him a considerable advantage as long as Bradley doesn’t hit him with too many head-butts.
Bradley was able to force Devon Alexander to quit after ramming heads with him in the 10th round of their fight. Alexander had been hit a lot of head-butts before the 10th round by Bradley, but in the 10th, Bradley nailed him with a head-butt that incapacitated Alexander long enough for the fight to be halted.
That’s really the most dangerous thing about Bradley. He’s not going to be able to score a stoppage over Marquez otherwise because the power isn’t there. It’s been 2 years since Bradley stopped 40-year-old Joel Casamayor with a body shot, but he’s not going to be able to stop a fighter like Marquez by going to the body.
Bradley simply isn’t a power puncher, and it’s not likely that he’ll even try to do that in this fight given that he’s coming off of a grueling war against Ruslan Provodnikov in his last fight in March, and he was hurt in that fight.
The last thing that Bradley wants to do right now is to get himself into another war where he takes a lot of head shots. Bradley realizes that he was most effective in the Provodnikov fight when he was moving and landing quick shots and getting away him.
Bradley will no doubt use that as the template to try and beat Marquez. Bradley isn’t fast enough to use Marquez’s 2009 loss to Floyd Mayweather Jr. as the blueprint to beat him because he’s slower and not nearly as skilled as the counter punching Mayweather was back then.
Comments are closed.