By Eric Thomas: Manny Pacquiao outweighed Juan Manuel Marquez by four pounds during yesterday’s weigh-in but Marquez looks like the much stronger fighter of the two with his bigger muscles that he’s added with the help of his strength and conditioning coach Angel Hernandez. That new muscle isn’t just useless muscle with no purpose.

Marquez appears to be punching a lot harder than before with every shot, and just when he loads up on his punches. With the new power that Marquez has, it’s going to be difficult for Pacquiao to win this fight because Marquez doesn’t appear to have taken a hit in terms of his speed. Sometimes fighters lose their speed when they get bigger.

One prime example of that is Tim Bradley. He put on a lot of muscle before his fight with Pacquiao last June, and it really slowed him down. But that’s not the case with Marquez. He’s punching with the same speed but with bigger power. This could be a problem for Pacquiao, because he hasn’t really faced anyone with a lot of power that was able to hit him with the kind of frequency that Marquez has in the past.

Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito are bigger punchers than Marquez, but they didn’t land many of their shots against Pacquiao because of his movement, so Pacquiao didn’t have to take the heavy shots from them like he might have to take tonight if he wants to win.

Pacquiao may be putting himself in quicksand if he opts to stick with his game plan of trying to be more aggressive against Marquez. If Marquez is punching with a lot more power than he did in the past, Pacquiao could wind up getting knocked out or badly beaten if he does try sand slug with Marquez with an all-out aggressive style.

Marquez is really hitting hard now and it might not be a wise thing for Pacquiao to try and slug with him tonight. If Pacquiao does, he’s going to need to have a good fall back plan to use if the punishment becomes too much for him to handle.