LAS VEGAS — Late Saturday night, long after Manny Pacquiao, Bob Arum and the rest of Pacquiao’s shellshocked entourage had left the MGM Grand, a beleaguered Freddie Roach held court with a handful of reporters. Like the rest of Team Pacquiao, Roach was baffled by how Juan Manuel Marquez, a 9 1/2 to 1 underdog the night of the fight, was able to make Pacquiao look so mortal. The difference was, Roach wanted to talk about it.
“I can’t believe I was so f*****g wrong,” Roach said. “I thought we were going to walk right through him. I thought he was going to come in with all that muscle, try to bang with Manny and he would get him out of there. But I honestly thought we needed to win those last two rounds to win the fight.”
Turns out, he did. Judge Robert Hoyle, who scored the fight 114-114, gave the last two rounds for Pacquiao. Flip one, and it’s another draw. Dave Moretti, who scored it 115-113 for Pacquiao, split the final two rounds. If he gives both the rounds to Marquez, it’s a draw. If Pacquiao had let up even a little in those last six minutes he would have, in the minds of the judges, lost the fight.
I say ‘in the minds of the judges’ (the third, Glenn Trowbridge, scored it an absurd 116-112 for Pacquiao) because in the opinion of many ringside observers, he did. I scored the fight 116-112 for Marquez. I thought Marquez carried most of the early rounds, I thought that Marquez landed the cleaner, crisper, more impactful punches, and I thought Marquez dictated the tempo throughout the fight. And I wasn’t alone. I was immersed in phalanx of respected boxing journalists. Tim Smith of the New York Daily News. Ron Borges of the Boston Globe. Bob Velin of USA Today. Each shared the same opinion: Marquez won the fight.
Roach doesn’t have a problem with that thinking. He saw what we did. He saw it early, too.
