Is Marquez being used as a “stepping stone” for Khan?

By Jim Slattengren: Yesterday, I read an interview with trainer Nacho Beristain where he said that he didn’t want his fighter World Boxing Organization lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO’s) to take a fight against WBA light welterweight champion. Golden Boy Promotions, the promotional company that promotes both fighters, is looking to match the 36-year-old Marquez against the young 23-year-old Khan for Amir’s debut fight in the United States on May 15th.

The problem here is a couple of things. Marquez is a great fighter who has won titles in the featherweight, super featherweight and lightweight divisions and is considered is highly respected by many in the boxing community. Marquez is also getting up there in age at 36, and looks to be on the downward slope in his career. He was beaten recently by Floyd Mayweather Jr. last year in a lopsided 12 round decision. Marquez had to move up in weight two divisions to fight Mayweather at a catch weight in the welterweight division.

Marquez ended up being too small, and the added weight that he put on seemed to slow him down and make him much more hittable against Mayweather. At 5’7”, Marquez is smaller than Khan by three inches and not nearly as fast as the British fighter in hand speed. For these reasons, Beristain doesn’t want his fighter Marquez to take on Khan. Beristain thinks that Marquez needs to “fully recover” from his last fight against Mayweather and doesn’t think it’s a good idea to fight Khan right now. He also doesn’t like the idea of Marquez being used as a “stepping stone” for Khan to make a name for himself in the U.S.

And Beristain has a point here. You would think that Golden Boy Promotions could find another suitable opponent for Marquez to fight, preferably one in Marquez’s own weight class rather than putting him in with one of their new stars that they recently signed. I don’t know if they see how other people are viewing this fight. From the outside, it looks like Marquez is being used to sharpen Khan’s appeal without putting him in a lot of danger.

Marquez is a great fighter, but as he showed in his fight against Mayweather, he’s small, doesn’t look good fighting above lightweight and appears to be slowing down with age. An argument can be made that Marquez doesn’t even look all that impressive at lightweight either. Sure, he captured the title at lightweight with a win over Juan Diaz, but Marquez took a lot of punishment in that fight and also took a lot of shots in his other battle at lightweight against Joel Casamayor in 2009.

It’s hard to imagine there not being other good paying fights for Marquez to get in the lightweight division rather than putting him at risk by matching him against a bigger, younger light welterweight fighter like Khan. To be sure, Marquez will likely get a better paycheck against Khan than he would against most other fighters in the lightweight or light welterweight divisions, other than against Edwin Valero, but it doesn’t seem like a move that is good for Marquez to take.

It’s also not a good move for Golden Boy Promotions, it would seem, because if Marquez loses badly to Khan, then he could lose value as a fighter and might not be as big a money maker in the future. Casual boxing fans might not understand that Marquez is moving up in weight against a bigger, younger fighter. Unless Marquez is getting a huge payday in the Khan fight, he would probably be better off looking to fight someone in his own weight class rather than being put in with a bigger guy like Khan.

If Golden Boy wants to make Khan look good, they need to pick out a weak punching fighter from the light welterweight division, like Paulie Malignaggi. Khan would probably do well against a light hitter like him. Khan wouldn’t have to risk being knocked out again like he was in 2008 against Breidis Prescott in his 1st round knockout loss.

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