Marquez: I beat Pacquiao in the last three fights; I’m not going to respect him in the ring

By Boxing News - 09/21/2012 - Comments

Image: Marquez: I beat Pacquiao in the last three fights; I'm not going to respect him in the ringBy Chris Williams: Juan Manuel Marquez sees himself going into his fourth fight with Manny Pacquiao having already beaten him three times already. Marquez figures that to beat Pacquiao for the fourth time, he’ll have to do things a little differently than before in order to make it so obvious that he’s the winner the judges can’t possibly take another one of his victories.

Marquez said to ESPN “The last three fights with Manny, I won. People ask ‘Why man?’ Because I think I won the fights. Pacquiao said he won the fights…I need to change something. I don’t know what to change for this fight. Pacquiao knows me. I need to change something. I don’t know what. I train very hard. I respect him here [motioning to his feet], but not in the ring.”

Let’s be real about this. Marquez doesn’t need to change anything. He fought well enough to deserve victories in the three previous fights with Pacquiao. The only thing that needs to be changed is to have different judges working this fight compared to the last three, because the judges for those fights were obviously looking at something that I couldn’t see nor a lot of other boxing fans in giving Pacquiao two victories and a draw with Marquez.

I don’t see it. Those seemed clear cut victories in each of those fights for Marquez, because he was the superior fighter in terms of ring generalship and he won more rounds. The only thing Pacquiao did well was score three knockdowns in the 1st round of the first fight with Marquez in 2004 and then knock him down again in the second fight in 2008.

In both cases, Marquez still had more than enough to deserve the victories in the 2004, 2008 and 2011 fights. So I think he doesn’t need to change anything for Pacquiao on December 8th. It just needs to be different judges working the fight, because some judges look at different things and the ones that worked the previous fights seemed more enamored with Pacquiao’s occasional bursts of energy after long periods where Marquez was dominating the action.



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