Yes, Manny Pacquiao won over Juan Manuel Marquez, but it simply did not feel like it. A lot of people (myself included) thought Marquez should have won (albeit not by much) or should have at least gotten a draw. The stats however showed it was indeed Pacquiao who landed more power punches and more puches overall.
So, why did it feel like Marquez should have at least gotten something out of this fight even though the stats and the judges said otherwise? That’s simply because the rounds that Marquez won, he won handily and convincingly. If you watched the fight, you saw Marquez land the cleaner and bigger hits. You also saw him dominate and clearly win a string of rounds in the middle of the bout.
The problem for Marquez is that the rounds that he convincingly won were scored in the same way to the rounds that Pacquiao barely won. See, in boxing’s 10-point must system, the winner of the round gets 10 points and the loser gets nine, unless there’s a knockout or complete and total domination, in which case the loser gets only eight points.
Marquez won about four or five rounds clearly, just not definitively enough to warrant giving Pacquiao only eight points. Pacquiao won the other remaining rounds (though he barely won some of those rounds). Add the scores up, and you end up with Pacquiao winning by the slimmest of margins.
It was a win but in my opinion it was a win that simply did not pass the eye test. It didn’t look good, and it didn’t feel good. It looked like Pacquiao was dominated for long stretches of the bout, and it didn’t look like he took it to Marquez enough.
What we all have to remember though is that the judges are there for a reason, and that’s because they know more than we do. They scored it as they saw it, and they gave the win to Pacquiao (two of them, at least).
In the end, it was still a win, and that should be enough for us to be proud of Manny Pacquiao.
From the Outside 