LAS VEGAS — A couple things we need to clear up before Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez step into the ring for the third time on Saturday night:
Pacquiao does not feel disrespected by Marquez. OK, maybe he feels a little peeved by the fact that Marquez showed up at a press conference in the Philippines sporting the now infamous “Marquez beat Pacquiao twice” T-shirt. But throughout fight week, the perception — one fueled by Bob Arum and Freddie Roach — has been that Pacquiao’s blood has been boiling over Marquez’s insistence that he won the first two fights. It’s not true. No one knows how close those two fights were better than Pacquiao; he put Marquez down four times over 24 rounds and Marquez just kept coming. Pacquiao’s motivation is putting punctuation on this rivalry, to settle it once and for all. Yes, Pacquiao wants the knockout. Yes, he wants it to be one-sided. When this fight is over, Pacquiao wants to finally stop hearing that he should fight Marquez again.
Marquez is doomed. Marquez is a huge underdog in this fight. Most observers feel that Marquez’s age (38) and the fact that he is moving back up to a weight class (welterweight) in which he struggled against Floyd Mayweather in 2009 are two big factors working against him. But though Marquez has seemed more hittable in recent fights, he is still regarded as the No. 1 135-pounder in the world and his counterpunching is as sharp as ever. Moreover, and this can’t be stressed enough, Marquez knows how to fight Pacquio. In previous fights, Marquez quickly got Pacquiao’s timing and though he took some shots, he has been more competitive with Pacquiao than any other fighter in recent history. Moving up in weight might be an issue, but at Friday’s weigh-in Marquez (who weighed in at 142 pounds to Pacquiao’s 143) looked more lean, more cut than he did before the fight with Mayweather. Pacquiao may still win, but this will be a very competitive fight.
