With just about two weeks to go until Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez take center stage for their third and deciding fight in Las Vegas on November 12th, We here at PDC.com wanted to take a look back, review, breakdown, score and put our final stamp on the first two bouts between these two legends. In part 1 of our 2 part article, we take you back to May 8th, 2005 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Juan Manuel Marquez was 42-2 at the time, and was the IBF featherweight champion and the WBA Super World featherweight champion as well. The first bout with Pacquiao was his 1st defense of the WBA title, which he won in a 7th round technical decision over Derrick Gainer, and the 2nd defense of his IBF title, which he took in a 7th round TKO victory over Manuel Medina.
Manny Pacquiao was coming off an unforeseen upset 11th round TKO win over ring legend Marco Antonia Barrera in his first trip up to the featherweight division. The win over Barrera basically put Pacquiao on the map for many people who had never heard of or seen him in action before. Pacquiao was 38-2-1 at the time of the first meeting with Marquez and from then on his career skyrocketed.
When the bell rang for round one Marquez came out confident, actually too confident. After landing good shots and keeping the fight in the center of the ring, Marquez soon learned of Pacquiao`s punching power. As he backed up Pacquiao with his right hand, Pacquiao fired back with a straight left that dropped Marquez midway through the first round. Marquez got to his feet immediately, only to be met by Pacquiao`s pawing jab and straight left hand again that floored him just before the one minute mark. 23 seconds later Marquez would be down on the canvas yet again from a left/ right Pacquiao combination. With 30 seconds left in the round Pacquiao came in for the kill and all Marquez could do was hang on. The war was on.
In the 2nd, Pacquiao came out in a hurry still finding a home for the straight left that bludgeoned Marquez in the 1st and bloodied his nose. It took about half the round for Marquez to get his wits about him, before he started countering some of Pacquiao`s attack but it wasn’t enough to win the round. Marquez slowed the pace in the 3rd rd, blocking most of Pacquiao`s power punches and countered well enough to steal the frame. After three rounds Pacquiao was easily up 29-25 on the PDC.com scorecard.
Marquez seemed to time Pacquiao better and stay out of harms way over the next few rounds, clawing his way back into the fight. What you can also see in some of these middle rounds is how underdeveloped Pacquiao`s skills were at that time. Pacquaio rarely used his right hand, and when he did he used it only as a measuring stick for his straight power left. Marquez showed great ring generalship, getting Pacquiao to box and not brawl. It was in rounds 4-6 where Marquez took control, round after round to get within 1 point on the PDC.com tally at 56-55.
Pacquiao came out a little more aggressive in the 7th. He used a lot of upper body movement and backed up Marquez for most of the round. Marquez picked his spots to counter but Pacquiao`s heightened activity may have given him the edge. The 8th round was more to Marquez` liking, he moved well and landed good body shots to punctuate the round. Every time the fight slowed down to become a chess match, it was Marquez getting the better of Pacquiao, and whenever the fight transformed into a pinball game, it was Pacquiao reaping the benefits. In round nine we saw something we had not seen all night, Pacquiao noticeably out boxing Marquez, and using his feet to stay out of the line of fire. Pacquiao used his jab and unleashed the straight left when he saw the opening to land it. Through 9 rounds, Pacquiao had only won 4 of them, but the early knockdowns had him winning the fight 85-83 on our card.
With 3 rounds to go this fight was already becoming a classic back and forth battle. Now we were in the championship rounds, where the elite separate themselves from the rest of the pack. The 10th started a little slow but halfway through Pacquiao`s hand speed took over. He pressured Marquez just as Trainer Freddy Roach had asked him to, and it was paying dividends as the blood from Marquez` nose began to flow once again from the power left hand shots he received from Pacquiao. Marquez would redeem himself a round later with his accuracy. He neutralized Pacquiao`s offense and pinpointed his right hand to scratch out another round, inching closer on the cards 104-102.
The 12th round was just more of the same, Pacquiao`s left and Marquez` counter right. Pacquiao seemed to land the more meaningful punches but it was a relatively close round. Both fighters let their hands fly until the bell. The final score on the PunchDrunkCorner.com scorecard was 114-111 in favor of Pacquiao. We had Pacquiao winning rounds 1,2,7,9,10,12, and the three 1st round knockdowns being the difference in the fight. HBO`s unofficial scorer Harold Lederman had it 115-110 also for Pacquiao, but ultimately it was the 3 judges scoring this fight a draw 115-110, 110-115 and 113-113 that lead to the rematch four years later.
This fight did not go without its share of controversy, it was noted that there was a scoring error on the part of one of the judges. Judge Burt Clements had the 113-113 scorecard but scored the 1st round wrong at 10-7 in favor of Pacquiao. With the 3 knockdowns in the 1st round, Clements` scorecard should have read 10-6. Had he scored it correctly, we may have never seen a second fight. Some time after the fight, Marquez lobbied all the way to the Philippines for a rematch, but Pacquiao fought only once more at featherweight before moving up to Super featherweight. The next time they would meet, would be at 130lbs.
Joey Santana can be reached via email: theboxingkidd@verizon.net
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