LAS VEGAS -- Shortly after his latest fight, Manny Pacquiao lay flat on his back on a wooden table in Locker Room No. 2 at the MGM Grand. Tissue paper covered all of his face except for the area around his right eye. He gripped the arm of his wife, Jinkee, with his right hand, squeezing tightly.
Above the eye, a gash extended about an inch and a half diagonally through his eyebrow, the result of what looked like an accidental head butt in the 10th round of his third fight against Juan Manuel Marquez.
As doctors numbed and cleaned the cut, Pacquiao twitched, his face twisting into a grimace, his grip on his wife's arm tighter each time doctors plunged the needle in.
In this room, no one talked about what had just happened in the ring, as if the events that unfolded late Saturday - another entertaining bout; another controversial decision; this time, a crowd that booed and lobbed beer cans in the direction of the judges - did not exist.
Instead, Pacquiao and a handful of friends talked about religion. They recited the Ten Commandments. They scheduled a Bible study for when they return to the Philippines on Wednesday. "God is great," Pacquiao kept saying, his face swollen in spots, his hands sore, his pride likely also bruised.
"God is great," he said again.
Doctors began to sew the cut closed. Because of the depth of the gash, they stitched in layers: eight stitches on the deepest level, eight more on an intermediate one and 12 more on the top. Inside Pacquiao's bottom lip, blood dripped into his mouth.
He wore jeans, slippers and a blue T-shirt that blared UNDISPUTED CHAMPION across his chest. His locker room, though, did not feel like the temporary quarters of a champion, of a boxer who promised throughout last week that this time he would pummel Marquez thoroughly, remove all the questions and all the doubt.
While Pacquiao praised God and received the stitches, much of his entourage gathered in the adjacent room. Gloom spread across their faces. They cast their eyes downward, saying little, celebrating less.
In the far corner of the room, Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach, sat on a folding table. He shook his head. He said he had expected Marquez to engage more, to attack, especially after Marquez bulked up in the weeks before the bout.
Instead, Marquez fought a brilliant tactical fight. He flummoxed Pacquiao by waiting for him, then counterpunching, with left jabs and right hooks and right hands. Whenever Pacquiao moved forward, Marquez hit him square and hard. He never allowed Pacquiao to mount the offensive onslaughts that marked Pacquiao's rise to stardom, never allowed Pacquiao to find any kind of rhythm or dictate the bout's pace.
