On Saturday, we witnessed yet another very close fight between two future Hall of Fame fighters who had fought on even terms twice before. Manny Pacquiao improved his record to 54-3-2 by once again defeating his biggest rival, Juan Manuel Marquez (53-6-1) via razor-thin majority decision. Marquez gave as good as he got throughout the bout and unlike his previous two fights with Pacquiao, he managed to avoid kissing the canvas. When analyzing Marquez?s body language and movement in the ring, you could almost feel Marquez reminding himself that he would have won the previous fight had he not been dropped. I truly believe that is the reason why he didn?t put his foot on the gas during those crucial last few rounds which Pacquiao won two of the last three on all three judges’ scorecards which enabled him to edge ahead of Marquez on the final tally.
This fight proved to us that for all his gusto for going to war, Juan is not quite the gambler Kenny Rogers was singing about in his 1978 country classic.
Even though Marquez’s trainer, Nacho Beristain, told him in the corner that he was ahead in the fight, Marquez should have fought with a sense of paranoia down the stretch. He should have told himself, ?I am not going to go through this sh*t again! I don?t trust these damn judges? (or ?no confio los juezes?). Instead, he fought with caution those last few rounds and it cost him the fight.
The end of the fight and many people?s reaction to it reminded me a little of the end of the first Jones/Tarver fight. It was Tarver?s fight to win and he lost it in the championship rounds when Jones dug deep and did a little more than Tarver to earn the victory. Pacquiao didn?t dig as deep as Jones did, but he did a little more than Marquez did in those last two rounds to secure the win. Interestingly, two of the three judges had the identical scores in the Tarver/Jones fight as the ones in the Pacquiao/Marquez fight. The third judge had Jones winning by a huge margin (9 rounds to 3) so the best Tarver could have done by winning those last couple rounds is earn a draw. Marquez actually could have mathematically won the fight if he took the few rounds instead of only winning one of them. If they fight again, hopefully this will prove to be a huge lesson learned on Juan?s part.
