By Allan Fox: Manny Pacquiao and his trainer Freddie Roach have devised what they feel is the perfect strategy to beat 39-year-old Juan Manuel Marquez (54-6-1, 39 KO’s) tonight and Pacquiao thinks he can do it by giving the counter punching Marquez some of his own medicine by counter punching him.

Pacquiao said to thesun.co.uk “We changed a little bit of our strategy for this fight. We studied his [Marquez] style and we’re ready for him. He know how I like to fight, which is getting in and out, si will be trying to counter punch more.”

So what Pacquiao is saying is instead of backing away after throwing two or three punches, he’s going to be staying in the pocket more to land counter shots after Marquez throws his punches because it’s usually Pacquiao who has been throwing his punches first in their three previous fights.

In looking at the recent sparring of Pacquiao, he looks pretty much the same as he’s always had. He didn’t show much in the way of counter punching during any of the sparring session video that I saw. What I noticed is that Pacquiao would land a few shots and immediately back away and then come back at his opponents a few seconds later. There wasn’t any staying in the pocket to throw counter punches and there wasn’t any kind of a new, more aggressive Pacquiao. He fought like he always does.

It’s hard to change a fighting style especially when a fighter has been using that same style for many years like Pacquiao has. He can say he’s going to be throwing more counter punches or that he’s going to be more aggressive, but I think what we’re going to see is the same Pacquiao that we’ve seen in his last handful of fights. He is what he is. He’s 34, and not going to all of a sudden transform himself into Floyd Mayweather Jr. just because his trainer and him having been working on a new strategy.