Saturday night's fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao is the perfect example of what's wrong with boxing.

How can I say that after the two waged a tacitcal and spirited battle in front of a bipartisan crowd of Mexican and Filipino diehards? Look at the decision. Marquez, though dropped in the 3rd round, clearly and consistently outboxed Pacquiao, using an arsenal of combination punching to keep his stronger opponent off balance. Marquez boxed when he had to and fought when he had to.He fought a near perfect fight. He should have been celebrating a victory and vindictation for all of Mexico.Being generous, Paquiao won five rounds. At the most. But that's not how the judges saw it: Duane Ford and Tom Miller scored it 115-113 and 114-113, respectively, for Pacquiao. Jerry Roth had Marquez winning 115-112. I had it Marquez winning by a wider margin of 117-110.

Marquez, 48-4-1 (35), controlled Pacquiao with his left hand in the first round, jabbing to the body and stopping Pacquiao in his tracks with sharp counters. In the 2nd, Marquez was even more effective at this tactic, displaying better timing and straing his opponent with right hand leads. Pacquiao, 46-3-2 (35) abandoned his tentativeness for aggression in the 3rd and it paid off in spades: he knocked marquez down with a straight left and had him hurt again in the closing seconds of the round. It looked a lot like round 1 of their first encounter, and Marquez was in trouble. But the 3rd was nothing but a digression; the rest of the fight featured Marquez beating Pacquiao to the punch and cutting his right eye with a right hand in the later rounds. Marquez receieved a gash near his eye from an accidental headbutt, but still engaged in thrilling exchanges with Pacquiao, this time doing a little better job of staying on his feet.

Boxing is the only sport where the drama staged by two highly skilled athletes is regularly neutralized by over-the-hill judges making poor decisions. It kills the sport, makes fairweather fans write it off as a joke. Last night's decision was not the worst in boxing history. But that doesn't mean we should treat it as business as usual. But that's exactly what the HBO team did, repeatedly pointing to the 3rd round knockdown as being the deciding factor of the fight. As if one 10-8 round for Pacquiao could negate round after round of effective boxing by Marquez. HBO should no better, especially since Marquez-Pacquiao I saw Marquez dropped three times in the first and still had scores of 114-114, 115-113 for Pacquiao, and 115-113 for Marquez.

Marquez was disappointed after the loss, and rightfully so. Even Pacquiao looked surprised when his name was announced as the winner. Fighters train too hard to have their work arbitrarily judged by seemingly incompetent judges. The mere fact that there are many lists on sports web sites and blogs naming "the 10 worst boxing decisions of all-time" proves that a new, fairer system of scoring must be put in place to ensure that agood fight is scored correctly. After all, the outcome of a fight is what everything hinges on, including legacies, and how history ends up viewing fighters.

Just ask Juan Manuel Marquez.