Marquez: I’ll chase Bradley down if he runs

By Boxing News - 10/07/2013 - Comments

marquez65By Allan Fox: Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) has really trimmed down his physique in getting ready for his fight against WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) this Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. Marquez, 40, realizes that he’s going to have to spend a good part of the fight trying to track Bradley down, and he appears to have backed off the muscle-building exercises to focus more on speed and endurance to be able to get to the quicker fighter.

Marquez said “Bradley talks and talks because he’s afraid to lose. If he wants to box by running away, I’ll chase him down with my experience and intelligence. On October 12th, the victory won’t just be mine; it’s for all my fans. And above all, for my country.”

Bradley is coming off of a really tough fight against Ruslan Provodnikov that I imagine he’d like to forget about if he could. Bradley suffered a concussion in that fight when he opted to fight Provodnikov’s style of fight, and it resulted in Bradley getting hurt badly. He admitted recently that it took a long time for his speech to clear up after that fight and that’s obviously something that you have to wonder about with him about to take another tough fight.

Bradley has sent mixed messages about his fight with Marquez by saying that he plans on knocking him out, but then also saying that he’s going to use movement to box him. It would seem more likely that Bradley will choose to stay on the outside to keep from getting hit a lot in this fight. He’ll fight like he did in beating Manny Pacquiao last year by using an in and out fighting style, and turning it on in the last 30 seconds to steal the rounds.

If Marquez isn’t aware of Bradley’s tendency to turn it on late in the rounds, then we could see Bradley winning quite a few rounds that way. Many judges tend to be heavily influenced by what occurs in the last part of the rounds, and that’s why you see smart fighters looking to do their best work when the round is close to expire. There’s some fighters that make a career out of fighting like this and it works.

Marquez will have to use his feet in this fight because if Bradley does choose to move around around the ring, then he’s going to be changing directions a lot to keep from having the ring cut off on him. Bradley has a lot of muscle on his frame, but he can move well when he wants to.

This fight could end up looking a lot like Marquez’s bout against Serhiy Fedchenko last year in April. Fedchenko chose to stay on the outside and move around the ring to keep from getting hit by Marquez, and it worked in that he limited the amount of times that he was hit in the fight. It was still a mostly one-sided affair with Marquez dominating, but it was far closer than it would have been had Fedchenko chose to stand his ground and fight Marquez in a traditional fight.



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