Marquez Wants Just One Victory Over Pacquiao

Marquez Just One Victory Over Pacquiao

Just once, it is the only want of Juan Manuel Marquez - to celebrate a victory over Manny Pacquiao.

This coming Saturday night, this will be the sole motivation for the non-title welterweight clash with his arch-rival in Las Vegas

Marquez has already fought with Pacquiao for three times. The third battle just happened 13 months ago in the same MGM Grand ring where they meet on Saturday. And out of the three bouts, he has not beaten the Filipino.

"People tell me, 'You really beat him', in the last three fights," Marquez, a three-division world champion, said on Wednesday. "A lot of people feel I beat him.

"But I want to have my hand raised. I want the judges to really look at what they're doing and get it right this time."

When they last met, Pacquiao kept his WBO welterweight title with a controversial majority decision.

For his part, Pacquiao seems to be growing increasingly irritated by the Mexican's persistence that he won their previous three fights, particularly because of the counter-punching style favored by Marquez, whose record now stands at 54-6-1, with 39 knockouts.

"He always claims he won the fights," said Pacquiao (54-4; 38) who has won world titles in eight divisions. "So he needs to prove something.

"You cannot say, 'Yes I won the fight' when you are always backing off. If you're claiming you won the fight, then you have to press the action.

When Pacquiao’s trainer was asked about the decision, "I thought Manny won that fight," Freddie Roach said on Wednesday. "But the booing was very loud and very vocal.

Pacquiao recognizes that his series of fights with Marquez had been the defining competition of his career.

Posted by Andre Monohan on Friday December 07 2012, 6:16 AM EST. Ref: Google. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0