The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology may not be willing to confirm this, but the counter right hand of Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez that knocked the daylights out of

Filipino ring icon Manny Pacquiao arguably registered on the Richter Scale, with the aftershocks being felt by every Filipino. So devastating was the impact of Pacquiao’s sixth round knockout loss to Marquez that the front page of the top newspapers in the country read like the obituary page the following day.

Pacquiao actually got off to a good start in his fourth showdown with Marquez at the sold out MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. He easily won the first two rounds, jabbing and repeatedly flustering Marquez with one-two combinations. However, the momentum of the fight changed in the third round, when Marquez sent Pacquiao flat on his back with a sledgehammer overhand right.

Pacquiao was able to regain the equilibrium in his feet, but from that point on the Filipino knew he was embroiled in a war. After a sober fourth round, Pacquiao exploded in the fifth by catching Marquez with a solid left. Marquez’s glove touched the canvas and American referee Kenny Bayless immediately ruled a knockdown.

Pacquiao accelerated in the sixth round, befuddling Marquez with movement and lightning-fast combinations. His nose profusely bleeding, Marquez seemed ready for the picking. In the last five seconds of the round, Marquez was under duress and reeling along the ropes. Pacquiao went for the kill, lunging at Marquez in a move that was supposed to be preparatory to a lethal right-left combination. For some reason, the move turned out to be a mere feint, leaving Pacquiao wide open for a counter. Seeing the opportunity, Marquez unloaded a crisp counter right that landed smack on the face of the onrushing Pacquiao. Like a motorcycle engaging a tank in a head-on collision, Pacquiao felt the full brunt of the blow and crashed to the canvas head-first. Referee Bayless did not bother to count and immediately pulled the plug. As it turned out, Marquez knocked out Pacquiao with one second left in the round.

Pacquiao admitted that after the fight that he became overconfident upon hurting Marquez and drawing blood from the Mexican’s nose. He claimed he was bent on finishing Marquez and never saw the counter punch as he was coming in. In his eagerness to give the crowd a high-octane slugfest, Pacquiao ended up paying the ultimate price.

Marquez picked his first victory against Pacquiao after settling for a draw in their first showdown and losing the next two fights on points. The Mexican’s latest victory, however, is so conclusive that it wiped out whatever gains Pacquiao had realized in the first three meetings.

The fourth meeting was supposed to bring the curtains down on an exciting, albeit controversy-riddled, rivalry. But instead of ending the rivalry, the result of the fourth fight only injected new life to it. If Pacquiao got beat up in the entire fight, nobody would be hankering for a fifth scrap. Pacquiao, however, seemed on his way to winning either by technical knockout or an emphatic decision when he got caught. What could have happened had Pacquiao survived the sixth round? A fifth encounter holds the answer.

Then again, Pacquiao has a lot of soul-searching to do. Before the Marquez fight, he already looked pedestrian against the likes of Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, Shane Mosley and Timothy Bradley Jr. While this writer was pulling for a Pacquiao victory against Marquez, I did not mince a word in telling the media before the fight that Pacquiao’s physical preparation and mental fitness left plenty to be desired. Suffice it to say, the fire in Pacquiao was already diminishing before Marquez eventually put it out.

The crater created by Marquez’s unleashing of his Hammer of Thor-like right on Pacquiao’s jaw is so deep that Pacquiao will need to muster all the will-power to climb out of it. Pacquiao can archive the gloves at this very minute with his legacy plated in gold. But in the event he decides to lace on the gloves again, he should first take a tune-up fight against a lesser-known adversary to effectively gauge if he still has it in him to mount a comeback.

Pacquiao will also have to get rid of all the excess in his plate and focus solely on boxing. He has to go back to his roots if he wants to give his career the glorious send-off it deserves. If he cannot totally commit himself to the sport, Pacquiao should call it day for his own safety.

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For comments, the writer can be reached at atty_eduardo@ yahoo.com.