Like the first Diaz fight, Katsidis did his share of scoring and trying to apply pressure on the older man with the older legs and made it look like he was doing better than he actually was a lot of the time, imo. Marquez was more precise, more effective and always mentally able to make it his show. Kat caught Marquez with a beautiful on the button left hook and Marquez went down very hard and did what a truly great fighter can do by weathering that and coming back strong. Katsidis would connect and Marquez would counter with three accurate brutal shots in return. Marquez was far from unscathed but the technique was all JMM when he nullified the left hook's chances for the most part, leaving Kat's bizarrely thrown right to do very little (WTF is up with the way Katsidis crooks his elbow? His left hook is so well executed, why is the right like that?). Anyway, it was a fight where JMM went to the ropes and fought well off of them, even though that should've been Kat's fight. In the end, Katsidis, who is a pressure guy was on shaky legs for quite a while in the round, looked like he was very close to being done even though he was still up and clear eyed, it seemed. But the body language was really bad and JMM's accuracy was vicious. Bayless decided to step in and stop it when it wasn't that heated, just, I think, because Katsidis looked so bad. Some people were upset with the stoppage. I had a knee-jerk reaction where I was dismayed, but after reviewing it and knowing A. JMM's power B. Katsidis' uncharacteristic biking C. Not hearing Katsidis complain at all...I figure it wasn't a terrible stoppage...and am pretty sure it was going that way anyway.
Great performance from Marquez. I really thought that this was the fight where Marquez would show is age and that Katsidis is exactly the type of fighter to make an opponent looked old. But Marquez proved me wrong by showing me that by keeping his head in the fight and by delivering hard, accurate counter punches and steadily banging the body, you can stop a younger bull like Katsidis in his tracks. That being said, there are two strange things that really stuck to me about this fight 1. Like Boxed Ears... what the hell was up with Katsidis' right and his elbow? Is that even an effective shot? 2. What is it with left hands and Marquez? That makes it... 6 times now that he's been dropped with a left (granted, 4 of those came from Pac). And goddamn, that man has incredible recuperative powers, when they showed that slow-mo clip, it almost looked like Marquez was out the moment the left hand hit him, and then once round later it's as if it never happened....
