Losing a tactical battle, winning the war

 

The first picture shown of a beefier Juan Manuel Marquez did not project shining knife-life sharpness.
There was not a hint of the swift, untouchable mountain deer.

The Mexican boxing great appeared more like cattle headed for the meat market.
The eyes were lightless.
His shapeless body flat as a sack.
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Whether lead men in Team Pacquiao, namely Freddie Roach and Alex Ariza, noticed this dumb deterioration could not be determined.
The trainer and conditioning coach were, however, singularly convinced why Marquez had decided to bulk up in a rush.
El Dinamita was raring to fight and make war!
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Marquez, as a consequence, was bestowed a few odd tags.
The most apt was The Bulk or Poorman’s Lou Ferigno.
Anyway, that dull picture was displayed for the boxing world to see more than a couple of weeks before Marquez met Manny Pacquiao in the third bout of their arch-rivalry.
For the record, the result of that bout—Marquez outclassing Pacquiao in a tactical battle but losing by majority decision in the scores of the judges—has divided prizefight aficionados.

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Insisting he clearly won, Pacquiao honestly chided several countrymen who had sided with Marquez and checked if their hearts now also beat for Mexico.
Anyway, whether or not Roach made a slip or committed an oversight should not be worth the bother this late.

But yesterday, Ariza made a clean breast of it in a talk with Joseph Herron of Fight Saga:
Ariza confirmed they had overlooked the fact that Marquez could indeed return to fighting form—to stand sturdy as a tree, withstand Pacquiao’s whirlwind onslaught while hitting back—after a two-week trim-down regimen.

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