Pacquiao vs. Marquez: Pac-Man Has More Than One Advantage in Third Bout

It's easy enough to be stoked for the third bout between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez. This is to be the final fight in a trilogy, and both fighters are heading into it with unfinished business.

If you want to be even more stoked for Saturday's bout, I recommend going back and re-watching the first two fights. You'll get a sensation similar to the one you get when you watch the first two movies of a trilogy days before the third and final film is due to be released.

You'll also notice quite a few things. Above all, what I think you'll notice is that the Manny Pacquiao that we know and love today did not participate in either of those fights. 

No sir, the fighter in both those bouts was a watered-down version of today's Pac-Man. He had virtually no right hand to speak of in the first bout, and he really wasn't a better fighter than Marquez in the second bout. He had come a long way, but he was still incomplete.

Three years have passed, and Pac-Man has certainly gotten much better. For all intents and purposes, he is a complete fighter now. When all is said and done, we are going to be able to go back and look at three different fights that feature three very different versions of the world's very best pound-for-pound boxer.

Concerning the third version of Pac-Man, I actually think Pac-Man himself said it best when he spoke to FightHype.com:

"

I have more weapons than I did the last time we met. Our styles always guaranteed excitement for the fans and for us. Now I have a right hand and lateral movement that I didn't have in the first two fights. It will be the best fight yet.

"

Go back and watch the first two fights, and you'll realize that Pac-Man pretty much hit the nail on the head. Like I mentioned above, he didn't have a right hand in the first fight, and whatever lateral movement he was capable of was more or less constricted to his upper body. That got him in trouble after the first round in the first fight, and it got him in similar trouble in the second fight.

Now that Pac-Man has these things, you can see where Freddie Roach is coming from when he insists that Saturday's fight is not going to last six rounds (see SportsRadioInterviews.com).

Naturally, this is where you have to concede the point that Marquez has also evolved as a fighter. And I admit, you do have to give him that much credit, and you can rest assured that Pac-Man isn't about to underestimate him.

But I think this is where Pac-Man's other advantage comes into play, and that's his experience at welterweight. He's fought and won several bouts at welterweight, and Marquez's one and only foray into welterweight resulted in a beating at the hands of Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Presumably, Marquez will be more comfortable at welterweight this time around, but he can't match Pac-Man's experience. You might say that the tables have been turned in that regard.

Don't get me wrong, Marquez could definitely win this fight. He's boasted about beating Pacquiao twice for a reason, and that's because he's more or less the one guy Pac-Man hasn't mastered. Marquez could have won either of the first two fights, and the possibility exists that he will win the third.

For Marquez to win, though, he will have to up his game. 

We already know, after all, that Pac-Man has upped his.