Earlier this evening, I watched a terrific fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz. It was a hard-fought battle between a top young fighter and one of the all-time greats.
But after the third or fourth round it was obvious that Marquez was going to win the fight. Why? Because right from the start he was throwing the hardest shots and Diaz couldn't counter with the same kind of power.
That's why I don't understand some of the post-fight articles claiming this might have been Marquez's toughest fight to date.
Marquez said in his post-fight interview that he knew he had the fight after the first three rounds, and he did. He was landing the cleaner power shots, no matter how many times the clueless Jim Lampley insisted otherwise.
(Seriously, how is it that Jim Lampley has worked top fights for 25 years and still doesn't know anything about the sport? I really don't understand that at all.)
Not only was he hitting Diaz with the harder blows, he was also hitting Diaz with power shots to the body, which always kill a fighter in the later rounds.
Diaz throws a lot of punches and he's a tough kid. But his punches just don't pack the wallop of other top fighters. This is why he has such a low knockout percentage. It was only a matter of time until Marquez caught up with him.
Still, it was a fun fight to watch and it even might have gone another round or two if Diaz hadn't been cut over the eye. Which brings me to the silliest statement of the evening.
How can anyone claim that Diaz was a tougher opponent than Manny Pacquiao? The Pac-Man suffered a much nastier cut in his last fight with Marquez and ended up winning the fight. Not only that, Manny has knocked Marquez down a total of four times in two fights, which I believe speaks for itself.
But that speaks to the greatness of Marquez. He gets flattened three times in the first round by one of the greatest fighters of all time, and not only finishes the fight but gets a draw, which many boxing fans considered a win.
Only a great fighter like Juan Manuel Marquez.
That's why Marquez so desperately wants to fight Pacquiao a third time. He may have called out Mayweather at the end of the night, but he knows he still has unfinished business with Manny. Unfortunately for Marquez, that fight is at least a year away.
In the meantime, expect Marquez to take out everyone who comes his way. Because he that good.
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