ROC4LIFE

Pacquiao and Marquez battle for the WBA & IBF Featherweight titles in 2004.

Pacquiao is gearing up for his fourth meeting with Juan Manuel Márquez. In the first installment of our Pacquiao vs Marquez IV blog series, Manny reflects on their first showdown. His thoughts below. (See Marquez’s thoughts on their first fight here)

Manny Pacquiao on First Fight with Marquez
The first fight with Juan Manuel Márquez was very exciting. Everyone was saying that it was a matchup between the two best featherweights and that was contagious to me. I trained very hard with Freddie Roach and I was really looking forward to it.

After I knocked Márquez down for third time in the first round and I headed back to the corner I was thinking “It’s over. If I throw a few more left hands I’ve got him and I can end this in the second round.” Freddie was telling me the same thing.

So I threw more lefts at Márquez but the problem was I didn’t land them this time. I might have been a little impatient trying to end the fight and looking back now those misses gave him time to recuperate a bit and adjust his game plan against me.

I was really surprised at how hard Márquez fought and got himself back into the fight. That really impressed me. But better than that, we gave the fans a great fight to watch.

Toward the latter rounds, because I was wearing socks that were very thin, I had developed blisters on my feet making it very difficult for me to move as effectively as I had during the earlier rounds. I had to fight more flatfooted than we had trained. After the fight, when I took my boots off, my socks were worn through and they were very bloody.

Going into the last two rounds of the fight, Freddie told me I had to really pick it up and take the last two rounds to “seal the deal,” which I did. No question I won those last two rounds and I hurt him in the 12th round when he came out in a southpaw stance and I was able to land some very hard shots. I remember him looking unsteady after I hit him.

It was called a Draw but if the one judge had correctly scored the first round 10–6 [for the three knockdowns] instead of 10-7, I would have won the decision. But then again, maybe we wouldn’t have had the great fights together that followed if he had?

HBO’s Emmy®-Award-winning all-access series “24/7” premieres an all-new edition when “24/7 Pacquiao/Marquez 4” debuts Saturday, Nov. 17 at 12:15 a.m. ET/PT. The four-part series will air for three consecutive Saturday nights before the finale airs the night before the welterweight showdown in Las Vegas.

Pacquiao vs. Marquez 4 takes place Saturday, December 8 from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and will be produced and distributed live by HBO Pay-Per-View beginning at 9:00 p.m. ET/ 6:00 p.m. PT.