Pacquiao Demolishes Margarito With Ease

Results

Speed beats power. Checkmate.

That seemed to be the moral of the story surrounding Manny Pacquiao’s twelve round brutal decision win over Antonio Margarito at Cowboys Stadium Saturday night. In fact, the only real surprise to me that came out of this fight was that Margarito didn’t win a single round on my card (my prediction going in was 9-3 Pacquiao at worst). And while this fight isn’t a definite indication that speed will beat power every time, this is pure vindication that Freddie Roach’s strategy to forgo strength training in favor of an added emphasis on speed was not only the right call, but a genius call.

The reason that this fight was as one-sided as it was was because of how one-sided the fighters looked compared to each other when they got into the ring. The height advantage alone pointed to giving Margarito some advantage points when taking reach into account. The weight advantage of seventeen pounds in Margarito’s favor had an unintended effect for him while benefiting Pacquiao and actually making his night a lot easier: reduction of speed. Pacquiao’s unquestioned advantage in speed was obvious from the moment the first bell rang as Manny danced circles around Margarito for the better part of twelve rounds. This was what Freddie Roach must’ve seen coming and none of us cared to look at because we all expected Manny to move quicker than Margarito, but not to this extent. To paint a picture on how different these two looked as they moved around the ring, compared to Pacquiao, Margarito looked like a grizzled old fighter in his 40’s, and from the beginning it was obvious who was going to control the pace of this fight.

Of course it wasn’t all dancing as Pacquiao made plenty of time to paste Margarito with quick, furious combinations over and over again. This trend may have started for Pacquiao in round three. Round two was the best round of the fight and the only round where Margarito was able to land more than isolated shots. Margarito even seemed to hurt Pacquiao somewhat while never knowing the beast he appeared to have unleashed. In much the same fashion as Mayweather’s full-blown shaming of Shane Mosley after Mosley’s best round of their fight back in May, it was Pacquiao who came out for round three a man intent on inflicting pain. The ferocity and almost viciousness of Pacquiao’s attack in round three was something that I was able to isolate simply because I haven’t seen it in a recent Pacquiao fight; even his brutalizing of David Diaz in 2008 didn’t have the level of viciousness that was put on display in round three Saturday. That wave quickly faded and Pacquiao returned to being his normal, better-than-you self for the remaining nine rounds.

Margarito did have his moments as the second round—as mentioned before—was his best round of the fight and the only round that gave anyone an indication that this could be a competitive fight. And while he did land more punches in round six than most rounds and some may have even given Margarito the round based on that, the punches he was landing didn’t have anything on them and weren’t effecting Pacquiao in any meaningful way.

Margarito left Cowboys Stadium with what turned out to be a broken orbital bone on his right eye. The eye first began to swell around round three and might as well have been a bullseye after that as the swelling would only continue as the fight wore on. It got to the point in the final few rounds that the ringside doctor asked multiple times about Margarito’s ability to see—especially when Pacquiao’s relentless barrage started swelling below his other eye—as did the fight’s referee, Laurence Cole, and Margarito’s corner.

A broken bone on one of Margarito’s eyes being the only damage he sustained may have been a lucky break considering Pacquiao made it past 1,000 punches thrown for the fight (1,069 total) with 713 of those being power punches. He would land 44% of his punches and over twice as many as Margarito.

In most cases, the smaller man will lose in fights like these. The dynamic tends to favor the taller, heavier man, plus the fact that there are few boxers out there with the combination of speed and punching power like Manny Pacquiao. The second round brought the fears of Pacquiao fans and supporters to life as Margarito was able to land some good shots and got into a few heated exchanges with Manny where he wasn’t the only one to come away taking punishment. The only problem is that that was the only time that Margarito got into an exchange with Pacquiao and didn’t come out of it an overwhelming loser. During the rest of the fight anytime Margarito would land a combination here and there, Pacquiao would respond with two or three quicker and more powerful combinations. This would immediately reverse the vibe of the fight and put it right back to where it had been fifteen seconds before.

Pacquiao 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 120
Margarito 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 108