By Dave Lahr: It’s really not that hard to beat Manny Pacquiao, as Erik Morales and Juan Manuel Marquez showed in their fights with Pacquiao. Right now, many boxing fans mistakenly see Pacquiao as an unbeatable fighter, but he’s clearly very vulnerable as Morales and Marquez. Freddie Roach has fixed some basic flaws with Pacquiao’s game most notably with his previous inability to use his right hand. But the rest of the flaws in Pacquiao’s game still remain. Pacquiao can still be backed up with a series of combinations and he still shuts down when he’s under attack.

Morales, the proud Mexican warrior, was able to back Pacquiao and tag him with shots in their first fight in 2005. Morales realized that to beat Pacquiao all you had to do was nail him and keep nailing him with punch after punch and not let him start in with his own shots. The rematches between Pacquiao and Morales are less important because by then Morales was weight drained and unable to fight at the same level he had in his first fight with Pacquiao in 2005.

In the case of Juan Manuel Marquez, he realized that he could tag Pacquiao with counter shots each time Pacquiao would throw a left hand or a jab. Marquez merely waited each time for Pacquiao to throw a punch, and Marquez would time him and immediately tag Pacquiao to the head while he was recoiling from throwing a shot. Pacquiao remains entirely susceptible to being countered when he throws a shot to this day, which is probably why Pacquiao was steered away from fighting Marquez for a third time and why Pacquiao hasn’t been put in with any other counter punchers or good boxers since he won a gift decision over Marquez in 2008. If you want to beat Pacquiao, you don’t do what Ricky Hatton did in his fight with Pacquiao by trying to load up with one big shot and swing for the fences.

You saw what happened to Hatton when he tried that. It was easy for Roach to prepare Pacquiao for Hatton, because Hatton was so easy to read in the way that he would prepare to load up on a shot. It’s a much different story to face someone that just focuses on throwing counter punches or throws an avalanche of continues punches the way that Margarito does. Pacquiao has a lot more problems against those types of fighters. When Pacquiao does throw a lot of punches on his own, which he started to do recently in his fight with Joshua Clottey, he’s totally susceptible to right hands. Pacquiao ate some massive rights from Clottey in that fight and looked pretty swollen up by the end of the fight even with Clottey playing the part of a sparring partner for 12 rounds. Against a fighter that is smart and can throw enough punches to take advantage of Pacquiao’s dreadful defense, he’s very beatable. Margarito can do exactly what Morales and Marquez did, only better because he’s bigger and capable of throwing many more punches than them.