By William Mackay: Juan Manuel Marquez will find himself in a tough situation against Floyd Mayweather in their upcoming bout on September 19th. Marquez is used to being the counter puncher in a fight, but in this situation he’s going to have to take the fight to Mayweather and try to create all the offensive opportunities. Mayweather, as he usually is, will be sitting back and waiting for his opponent to come to him.
With Mayweather sitting back and essentially countering Marquez with short hard punches, Marquez’s face will start busting up before long. With the large amount of scar tissue that Marquez has over both eyes, he will very likely be put in a position where he will have to fight with blood dripping in one or both eyes against a faster and bigger adversary in Mayweather.
In Marquez’s past fights, he’s always been big enough to reach his opponents from the outside with long right hands or hooks. At close range, Marquez has been deadly with his powerful uppercuts and short right hands.
However, against Mayweather, Marquez won’t have the luxury of being able to fight from the outside due to Mayweather’s superior reach and Marquez won’t be able to compete adequately with Mayweather if he persists in trying to match Mayweather from long range.
Marquez doesn’t have a jab or the reach to get the job done against a bigger fighter like Mayweather. With little choice, since Mayweather won’t be coming to him, Marquez is going to have to go after Mayweather full bore to try and get on the inside where he can land some big shots.
The problem here is that Mayweather will be nailing him on the way in with either flurries or single shots thrown with a lot of accuracy and power. Mayweather is very good at hitting a moving target, so if Marquez is planning on trying to make it an inside fight, he’s going to have to use a lot of head movement on the way in.
Ricky Hatton did a poor job of this against Mayweather in their fight in 2007 and was hit often as he came rushing in. Even when Hatton would establish position directly in front of Mayweather at close range, it was Floyd who was getting the better of Hatton by throwing quick short punches over and over again.
Mayweather couldn’t miss with his shots and was able to get a lot of power on the punches even though they were thrown from a short distance. In Marquez’s video of him sparring in HBO”s Mayweather-Marquez 24/7 series, Marquez looks very slow and hittable as he comes plodding inside.
Once on the inside, I noticed that Marquez showed a tendency to drop his head much like Hatton as he worked the body. If Marquez does this with Mayweather, it probably will lead to Marquez getting hit an awful lot. As a lightweight, Marquez still had a lot of power. But with the fight against Mayweather taking place at 144, it’s questionable how much power that Marquez will have in his shots compared to Mayweather.
I think Marquez could take Mayweather out if he landed the kinds of uppercuts that Marquez landed against Juan Diaz in his last fight in February. But Marquez is going to have to take a lot of punishment in order to land any of his shots and I’m not so certain that Marquez will be able to that kind of punishment for 12 rounds without being stopped on cuts.
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