Marquez fought the wrong fight against Bradley

By Boxing News - 10/12/2013 - Comments

marquez#3By Chris Williams: Juan Manuel Marquez (55-7-1, 40 KO’s) only has himself to blame for losing to WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (31-0, 12 KO’s) by a 12 round split decision at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Marquez fought as a counter-puncher rather than learning from Bradley’s last fight against Ruslan Provodnikov by coming forward and throwing punches in bunches.

Bradley has problems with fighters that throw a lot of punches, and Marquez never even tried that to get the edge on him. Instead of throwing a lot of punches, Marquez focused on throwing one punch at a time, and he showed way too much respect for Bradley’s weak punches.

Provodnikov walked through Bradley’s shots to punish him with flurries, but Marquez looked like he was waiting too long to launch his attacks. He was afraid to get caught while coming in, but he should have done it anyway because it would have only been one punch that he got hit with and he could have flurried on Bradley.

The judges got the scoring right with them scoring it 115-113 for Marquez, 116-112 and 115-113 for Bradley. I had Bradley winning by a close decision. It would have been more lopsided, but he got lazy in the last part of the fight and let Marquez get back into it. Bradley probably didn’t even realize that he was giving away many of the last 4 rounds, because he looked pretty confident as if he didn’t have to fight hard.

Marquez didn’t start really fighting the right fight until the last 3 rounds, and by then he was too far behind in the scorecard to catch up to Bradley.

It’s just pretty surprising that a fighter as smart as Marquez couldn’t figure out how to beat Bradley from watching his fight with Provodnikov. Marquez fought the exact opposite type of fight that Provodnikov did, so it’s not surprising that he ended up losing tonight.



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