By Manuel Perez: In one of the worst decisions in recent memory, WBA super featherweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (44-2-1, 33 KOs) ventured to Indonesia and fought undefeated Chris John (36-0-1, 22 KOs), losing by a 12-round unanimous decision in John’s backyard. The final judges’ scores 116-110, 117-111 and 116-112, appeared to have no relevance to the actual fight that took place on that night. In fact, not only were they off, but off by a mile.
I personally scored the fight seven rounds to three with two rounds even. Marquez was docked two points for low blows, once in the 10th and the other time in the 11th. In each case, however, he easily appeared to win the round, which because of the point deductions, made the rounds even. John showed excellent boxing skills, fast hands and good movement, but his work rate and power were poor throughout the fight.
Marquez was the much harder puncher, and the one that forced the fight on John the entire 12-rounds. In the end, though, it was Marquez’s much superior punch volume that should have been easily enough to win the fight even with the two point deductions.
John, to be kind, looked bad, weak and just plain awful. He had no business fighting someone as good as Marquez on that night, and if the fight had taken place in any other country other than Indonesia, I firmly believe that John would have lost by a substantial margin.
John was certainly good at times, landing a handful of punches every round, but Marquez was tagging him often at a six to one clip. This wasn’t a fight where a someone gets the win despite being out-punched due to their more powerful shots, because Marquez was the much harder puncher of two. So not only did he land way more punches in every round, but he also landed the much harder shots as well.
Yet, he came still came out on the losing end on this night two years ago in Indonesia. Marquez much have been badly in need of money to travel to John’s country for the fight, because it was Marquez who came into the fight as the champion, not John, but nothing good can come of a fighter when they’re forced to step into another fighter’s home country or arena. 99 times out of 100, any calls or decisions, regardless of how the fight is being conducted, will generally fall in favor of the home town fighter. That’s just the way things are, and it’s not a good thing.
In the first round, John looked good, throwing a fast jab and hard right hands at Marquez. I was astonished at how well John moved around the ring, as he was very light on his feet and quite nimble. It probably didn’t hurt that he had a very slender build, which seemed to help him move. On the other hand, his lack of muscles hurt him in terms of power, which he had very little.
John’s speed was his power, but even though he was faster than Marquez, it didn’t translate into anywhere near the same power that Marquez was throwing. Marquez did little in the round and seemed to be studying John’s style. This allowed John to win the round almost by default. It was still a close round, because Marquez made him pay with big right hands.
In the second round, Marquez came out fast, landing big power shots and having little trouble landing his punches. Near the end of the round, Marquez landed a hard right to John’s midsection, knocking him back several feet and almost down. The punch was a hard shot, but John seemed like too skinny to take a hard shot of the type that Marquez was throwing. Before this fight, John had fought mostly Indonesian fighters in his home country, and probably matched up well with the lighter hitting fighters in comparison to Marquez.
In the 3rd round, John landed well with jabs and right hands to the body and head. He moved constantly, keeping Marquez from landing as often as he’d like. Still, Marquez made it very close, landing some big right hands in the last minute of the round.
In the 4th and 5th rounds, Marquez once again started landing hard shots and giving John all kinds of problems. John tried to turn Marquez back, but didn’t have the firepower to turn him away and was forced to flee to the safety of the outside. The Indonesian crowd had little to cheer for, as there were long moments in between each punch landed by John. Still, they cheered even when he threw punches that didn’t land, acting as if they had. John was badly beaten in both rounds.
In the 6th, John made the most of the few moments he threw punches in the round, landing a nice three punch flurry at one point early in the round, and then later, skillfully ducking a big right hand from Marquez and firing back a left to the midsection. It was quite a spectacular move on John’s part, showing some extraordinary skill to be able to make that move, because he had only a fraction of a second to duck the shot and fire off the body shot.
In rounds seven through nine, Marquez using power punching and steady pressure stalked John around the ring, hammering him with hard rights to the head and big body shots. Marquez landed a left hand low in the 8th, causing the referee to give him a warning. This would later on be the start of a problem that led to point deductions, despite the fact that John threw some low blows as well.
Early in the 10th round, Marquez landed a right hand that strayed low, leading to the referee Guillermo Perez Pineda stopping the action and taking a point away from Marquez. However, John didn’t have the power or work rate to add to the point deduction and spent the better part of the remainder of the round taking a lot of heavy punishment from Marquez.
This in effect made the round an even round, with Marquez appearing to win it outright with his bigger shots and better work rate. Later on in the round, Marquez landed another shot low, hitting John with a left hand. Thankfully, there was no deduction this time. However, Marquez appeared to be tempting fate by continuing to go to the body despite having been docked a point earlier in the round.
Marquez again landed a low blow at the start of the 11th, landing a left hand low. The referee then stopped the action and took another point away. In both cases, the referee did the right thing by taking a point away, because Marquez’s aim was frankly rotten and he should have stopped with the body shots when it became clear that the referee was going to take points from him. He didn’t, though. Like in the 10th, Marquez had way too much offensive fire power for the slender, weak-punching John to match him. As such, I scored this another even round.
In the 12th round, Marquez easily won the round, hammering John with big right hands and urgently stalking him around the right and blasting him with big shots. John didn’t have the strength to stand up to Marquez and spent much of the time on the back foot, throwing weak shots and focusing on his defense.
Overall, it was a terrible decision, one of the worse I’ve ever seen in boxing. At best, John deserved to win three rounds, but no more than that. He was simply too weak and not busy enough to win the fight against Marquez.
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