By Dave Lahr: Ever since Juan Manuel Marquez gave Manny Pacquiao a major hiding in their last fight in 2008, Marquez hasn’t been able to get Pacquiao to even consider getting back in the ring for a third fight. Now why is that? Could it be that Pacquiao doesn’t want any more from Marquez after getting beaten up, staggered and pretty well dominated in their two fights?

After getting the fight of his life against Marquez, Pacquiao, instead of giving him a rematch and trying to prove that he’s a better fighter than him, Pacquiao instead went after the soft David Diaz, beating him. Pacquiao then fought an old over-the-hill Oscar De La Hoya, who had to melt down from 154 to fight at 147, which weakened him badly and left him with zero energy to fight.

The last three fights of Pacquiao have come against Ricky Hatton, Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey. All of them were badly over-matched even before the fight had started. Cotto had been beaten nearly senseless by Antonio Margarito a year earlier and hadn’t shown that he was fully recovered from that beating.

Hatton had been stopped by Floyd Mayweather Jr. two years earlier and hadn’t done anything since that loss other than fighting Juan Lazcano and staggered by him twice, and then fighting a weak-punching Paulie Malignaggi, who was no threat to Hatton. Pacquiao’s last fight against Clottey was like fighting a punching bag.

Clottey didn’t even hardly throw any punches in the fight. He just seemed glad to be there and kept thanking Pacquiao for giving him he opportunity over and over again leading up to the fight. Now Pacquiao is going to be fighting Margarito, who hasn’t done hardly anything since being stopped by Shane Mosley last year. Margarito has fought once since then, beating a fringe contender named Roberto Garcia and looking boring as anything in winning the fight by a 10 round decision. Margarito has changed his style of fighting from an all out offensive machine to a fighter that hunts and pecks from the outside. He’s going to get killed, and it’s another crummy fight.

Okay, so why isn’t Pacquiao fighting Marquez? What is it about Marquez that is keeping Pacquiao from fighting him again? Is it because whenever Pacquiao would try to land a shot, Marquez would fire off a two and three punch combination that cause Pacquiao to look bad. Marquez has got Pacquiao’s number and that I believe is the major reason why Pacquiao isn’t fighting Marquez and won’t be fighting him again, ever.

Simply put, Marquez is just too dangerous for Pacquiao and would upset all the dreams of fighting Floyd Mayweather Jr. someday. They might as well stop dreaming about that because that fight isn’t ever going to happen unless Pacquiao gives up on the idea that he deserves a 50-50 deal with Mayweather. With the better pay per view numbers and an unbeaten record, Mayweather is naturally going to want to get a bigger slice of the pie. But the way I see it, I smell fear from Pacquiao about Marquez. He’s like krytonite to Pacquiao and he clearly doesn’t want anymore of that.