Juan Manuel Marquez has come close to beating Manny Pacquiao on three occurrences. It is about time he gets his hand raised.
All three of the bouts between the two rivals have been incredibly close. While the first one ended in a draw, Pacquiao escaped the other two with victories by decision.
In the fourth fight, Marquez has a chance of coming away with the victory, but he will need to change and improve a few things before he can win.
Limit Damage
In the first match, Marquez went down three times right away, and that was tough to recover from. The veteran was better at limiting the damage in later matches, but he still was not great.
Pacquiao has incredible speed and will no doubt get more punches off throughout the bout. However, he needs to keep his opponent's accuracy down.
In the most recent matchup, the Pacman landed a solid 43 percent of power punches, according to Boxingscene.com. They were not always as clean as Marquez's hits, but the overall amount still hurts over the course of 12 rounds.
If Marquez can stay strong defensively, it will not matter how many jabs Pacquiao can get in during the match. He just needs to make sure the big hits are avoided.
Counterpunching
After three bouts, there is not much that Pacquiao can do that will surprise Marquez. He knows exactly how his opponent will come out and how to use his aggressiveness against him.
As one of the best counterpunchers in the sport, this is exactly what Dinamita needs to do to come out on top.
Even Pacquiao can admit this strength of his opponent (via Kevin Iole of Yahoo!):
He is a good counter puncher. He is very patient and sits back and waits for action. If I waited for him to throw the punches first, the fight would be boring. That's why I have always been the one to make the fight between us.
Fortunately, it is not up to Marquez to make this fight exciting. His job is to win, and his best opportunity for that is to let the Pacquiao make mistakes and jump on the opportunity to counter.
Surprises are always nice against an opponent you have seen before, but there is no reason not to focus on your biggest strength and use it to win a big match.
Go For Knockout
All of the three bouts between these two fighters have ended in controversy, and none of them have gone completely in favor of Marquez.
He even went as far as saying that he was robbed following the most recent match, according to Martin Rogers of Yahoo!:
It is a robbery and of the two robberies I have had against him, this one is the more terrible. I was the one with the clearer punches and I won again. The audience protested because they knew that I won again. It is difficult to fight against a fighter and two judges as well.
If he has the ability to end the match early, he will not have to fight against any judges.
Marquez still has the skill required to force knockouts, just ask four of his last eight opponents who have gone down by that method.
He needs to be as aggressive as possible when opportunities present themselves to try to cause the most damage. He should still wait on Pacquiao, but really jump on mistakes.
Even if this leads to Marquez getting a little wild and opening himself up, it is worth the risk.
Losing another close decision does not mean much. He needs to give it everything he has to put Pacquiao on the ground and keep him there.
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