Inglewood, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Juan Manuel Marquez set up a possible fight with Manny Pacquiao for the WBO welterweight belt after winning a unanimous decision over Mike Alvarado in a title-elimination bout Saturday night at the Forum.<\/p>\n
Fighting for the first time since losing a split decision to Timothy Bradley in October, Marquez (56-7-1) sent Alvarado (34-3) nearly out of the ring with a right hand in the eighth round, then recovered when he was knocked down in the ninth.<\/p>\n
Two judges scored the fight 117-109 for the 40-year-old Mexican legend and the other had it 119-108.<\/p>\n
The win made Marquez the mandatory challenger to Pacquiao, who reclaimed the WBO belt with a unanimous decision over Bradley in April. Marquez knocked Pacquiao out in 2012, his only win in their four fights against each other.<\/p>\n
Marquez told HBO’s Max Kellerman in the ring that he didn’t know right away if he would fight Pacquiao again.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know at the moment but any decision is going to be good for me, my family and the Mexican fans,” Marquez said.<\/p>\n
Alvarado, 33, has dropped three of his last four fights. The Colorado native, a cut widening under his left eye, was sent stumbling back by Marquez’s hard right in the eighth round.<\/p>\n
He slid beneath the bottom rope and to the edge of the canvas.<\/p>\n
After the bell someone in Alvarado’s corner asked him, “Are you all right? Do you know where you are?”<\/p>\n
He was OK enough to drop Marquez with a stiff right in the first minute of the ninth round, leading to a flurry of exchanges between the fighters, each one landing many punches.<\/p>\n
In the 11th, he nearly dropped Marquez again with a straight right. Marquez’s knees gave out briefly, but he stood up straight without touching the canvas.<\/p>\n
Marquez improved to 13-0 at the Forum, fighting there for the first time since 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inglewood, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Juan Manuel Marquez set up a possible fight with Manny Pacquiao for the WBO welterweight belt after winning a unanimous decision over Mike Alvarado in a title-elimination bout Saturday night at the Forum. Fighting for the first time since losing a split decision to Timothy Bradley in October, Marquez (56-7-1) sent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18874,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18873\/revisions\/18874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}