LAS VEGAS -- The moment the fight ended, both fighters raised their arms in victory. Within seconds, corner men lifted each into the air in celebration.Both men were right. So were both corners. All deserved the assumption of victory.
But on a wild night of boxing at the Mandalay Bay Events Center here Saturday, a night when defeat brought with it no shame, Manny Pacquiao won a narrow split decision over Juan Manuel Marquez.It was a super-featherweight title fight. Super turned out to be a fitting word. Marquez had held the title. Pacquiao has it now. After watching this one, they might ponder sharing the belt. Six months with Pacquiao in the Philippines, six with Marquez in Mexico City.It was the kind of fight where, no matter how neutral you are, you root passionately -- for both fighters to live through it.At the end, Marquez's right eye, indeed, much of his face, looked like pulp. No fiction there.And Pacquiao's wasn't much better.When the final bell sounded, the front of Pacquiao's white trucks was mostly pink. Blood everywhere, some Mexican, some Filipino.They had fought once before, in 2004. Pacquiao had knocked Marquez down three times in the first round and Marquez still managed to hang in, turn things around and get enough points back to get a draw and retain his title. Often, rematches don't measure up. This one made that one look like patty-cake.There was one knockdown. Pacquiao caught Marquez with a killer left hook on the chin and put him down in the third round."I thought I was in control then," Pacquiao said afterward.Then Marquez caught Pacquiao with a razor-blade punch in the next round, cutting him badly over his right eye."That made it more difficult," Pacquiao said.Judge Jerry Roth had the fight scored for Marquez, 115-112; judges Duane Ford and Tom Miller had it for Pacquiao, 115-112 and 114-113, respectively.Marquez, naturally, hated the decision."The people are the best judges, and the people were booing him," Marquez said. "I won."Actually, the people are the worst judges. That's why they are called fans, short for fanatics.There may come a time when Marquez, who is five years Pacquiao's senior at 34, can sit back, watch a film of this fight and feel better about the defeat. If they had a meter that could have measured this one in terms of heart, guts, stamina and willpower, it would have been a draw.To be sure, styles were different. Pacquiao, as pronounced a left-handed attacker as there is, seemed to want a brawl from the start. It was almost as if, the minute he entered the ring, he forgot all those things about the use of his right hand that trainer Freddie Roach has been teaching and preaching.Pacquiao planted, coiled and lunged from the left. That's why Marquez's right eye, directly in the path of each lefty lunge, had no chance to survive more than a few rounds.
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