By Allan Fox: Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) captured the WBO “Fighter of the Decade” title with a brilliant 6th round knockout of Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) last night in front of over 16,000 fans at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Marquez later said he knew Pacquiao was going to come out aggressive looking for a KO in this fight because he’d been talking about wanting to do that for weeks now.
Marquez worked on his right hand so that when Pacquiao rushed forward, like he did last night, Marquez would be able to hurt him. This is exactly what happened in the 6th round when Pacquiao came forward quickly in the last seconds of the round and attempted a jab. Marquez then came over the top with a perfect counter right that sent Pacquiao into oblivion for 1 minute.
Marquez told espn “We always work on that punch…we knew he was going to come out aggressive…I knew he was going to be wide open.”
Pacquiao sure was wide open and seemingly not thinking clearly. He must have mistaken Marquez for Ricky Hatton or Shane Mosley, because he used very poor technique against the counter punching Marquez. Most good boxing trainers will tell you the last thing you want to do is be aggressive against an expert counter puncher like Marquez, because that leaves too many opportunities for the fighter to land a knockout counter punch like we saw last night.
Pacquiao – and his trainer Freddie Roach – would probably love to have had a second chance at last night’s fight with a different fight strategy, because the one that Roach devised was a big fail. He wanted to take Pacquiao back into the past when he was an all-out aggressive fighter, throwing massive amounts of punches and overwhelming his opposition. The strategy was a dangerous one even though it was working until the knockout. It was the wrong opponent for that kind of a strategy. Pacquiao would have been better off using that strategy against the light hitting Tim Bradley last June instead of with Marquez.
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