ANNY PACQUIAO (pictured) beat Juan Manuel Márquez by a slim margin on November 12th to retain his World Boxing Organisation welterweight title. One of the three ringside judges called the fight even, while the other two scored it in favour of Mr Pacquiao by margins of eight rounds to four and seven rounds to five. The crowd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, where the fight took place, heavily favoured Mr Márquez and booed the decision; many of those commenting on the bout also thought the Mexican had won. But however one viewed the decision, it was not surprising that the bout was another very close contest. In their first encounter in 2004, the two had fought to a draw. Four years later Mr Pacquiao won a split decision, in which one judge scored it in favour of Mr Márquez.
So why was Mr Pacquiao such a heavy betting favourite? The odds on the most popular online betting sites in Britain had Mr Pacquiao favoured by as much as 1:12, meaning a $12 bet would win just $1. The odds that Mr Márquez would win were around 9:1, and a draw was a 40:1 shot. The line in Las Vegas was similar, with Mr Pacquiao quoted at -800 (an $8 bet would win $1) and Mr Marquez at +500.
The “boxing traders” who set the odds at Paddy Power, an Irish bookmaker, considered three factors in setting favourable odds for Mr Pacquiao, according to Marc Webber, a spokesman for the company. First, Mr Pacquiao had beaten all six of the top-class fighters he had faced at or above 140 pounds (63.5kg) since his previous bout with Mr Márquez (which was at 130 pounds), whereas Mr Márquez had lost to the one opponent he’d faced at the heavier weight—although that happened to be Floyd Mayweather Jr, now seen by many as the world’s best pound-for-pound boxer. Second, Mr Pacquiao had dominated all of his fights, whereas Mr Mayweather easily handled Mr Márquez. Finally, the 38-year-old Mr Márquez is six years older than Mr Pacquiao and possibly past his prime.
Whatever the rationale, the avalanche of betting on Mr Pacquiao pushed the odds to levels that were hard to justify by their head-to-head form. “The prices looked skewed given their previous fights,” said Graham Sharpe, a spokesman for William Hill, a British bookmaker, who also writes a bet-tipping column in the Daily Express newspaper. “My fight tip was for Márquez, not because I thought he was definitely going to win, but because the prices were wrong.” As Mr Sharpe argues, the hype surrounding Mr Pacquiao had become a little hysterical. “Manny Pacquiao had acquired the reputation in the last couple of years of being as good as Muhammad Ali in his prime,” he says, “and of being able to beat opponents with one hand tied behind his back.”
As in many other sports, betting on boxing is often irrational. “Fans overvalue a fighter’s last fight,” says Richard Dwyer, a lawyer in Silicon Valley and author of book on boxing betting. “They overlook that the fight was against a different opponent with a different style. Márquez has had problems with Pacquiao’s speed and power early in fights, but once he acclimates he is able to outbox Pacquiao—the CompuBox numbers from their previous fights are revealing.”
CompuBox, a punch-counting system used widely by media outlets but not for official decisions, concluded after their first fight that “the raw numbers indicate Márquez was superior, for he out-landed Pacquiao 158-148 overall and 122-100 in power shots.” In calling it a draw, the judges must have balanced that with Mr Pacquiao’s greater precision in power punching (43% to 36%) and his superior work rate (he led by 639-547 in total punches and 408-208 in attempted jabs), as well as the fact that Mr Márquez was knocked down three times in the first round. It was a similar statistical story in their second fight, with Mr Márquez landing more shots, while Mr Pacquiao was busier and put Mr Márquez down in the third round. But despite the evidence of its own statistics, CompuBox concluded on its website before the latest fight that “Pacquiao has improved while Márquez has regressed since their second fight. The ‘Pac-Man’ is also motivated to produce an ‘erase all doubts’ performance, and against a 38-year-old Márquez he'll succeed by mid-rounds KO.” That was well off the mark.
During the course of the fight, the betting odds changed dramatically. Paddy Power suspended betting about two-thirds of the way through the fight, when odds had narrowed to 5:6 for both fighters. At William Hill, the odds of a draw narrowed from 40:1 to 10:1.
Mr Sharpe says that most big bettors put their money on Mr Pacquiao. The largest bet William Hill took was for £30,000 ($48,000) at odds of 1:9 for a Pacquiao win. That paid out just £3,333, and no doubt looked considerably riskier after the final bell. At the 5:6 mid-fight odds at Paddy Power, that wager would have won a more reasonable £25,000. In any case, William Hill says that it made a small loss on the overall bets it took on the fight, which totalled “in the mid six figures.”
Despite the protests by the Márquez camp, as well as some fans and commentators, about the injustice of the decision, Paddy Power will not be refunding any bets, as it did after the Wales-France match in the Rugby World Cup—when it gave back €80,000 ($109,000) because of what it judged to be a bad decision by the referee that led to a Wales loss. In the fight, the decision may not have been fair to Mr Márquez, but “there was no clear blue water” between them to call it an injustice, said Mr Webber.
That would seem to be borne out by the CompuBox numbers, which again showed a very close fight. But while Mr Márquez stayed upright this time and consistently connected, the data show Mr Pacquiao was again the busier overall and the more accurate power puncher of the two.
Ahead of last week’s fight, Mr Mayweather was quoted saying he had cleared a date next May for a match with an unnamed opponent. If that is with Mr Pacquiao, as fight fans have been clamouring for, it will be between the two most hyped boxers of the past decade. But after his underwhelming performance against Mr Márquez, the odds for a Pacquiao victory have moved out from 10:11 to 5:4, while Mr Mayweather’s have been cut to 4:7 from 4:5.