By Sean McDaniel: WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO’s) will be fighting a needless rematch against Juan Diaz (35-3, 17 KO’s) next month on July 31st, at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is a fight that’s kind of hard to understand why it’s being made other than to bring money for the fighters. Marquez, 36, wiped Diaz out last year in a 9th round TKO in February 2009.

The fight was interesting in the early rounds, when Diaz was giving Marquez some problems with his work rate and combinations. However, Marquez kept countering Diaz, making him pay for his shots and giving him a lot of problems. In rounds six through nine, Marquez discovered that Diaz was a sucker for an uppercut and began to blast away with them every once in awhile. What made it so easy for Marquez was the crowding style of Diaz. He basically was all over Marquez in every round, as he would come in close to throw his shots while trying to overpower Marquez.

This kind of fighting style had worked for Diaz in most of his bouts except for his fight against Nate Campbell in March 2008. However, Marquez was much too smart to be beaten by a fighter that crowds him. He began to pound Diaz with short punches to the head at every opportunity.

The winner of this fight could be in line for a decent – but not great – money fight against WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan. They would have the honor of having to put on weight to fight Khan for his title. Personally, I think the idea really stinks. It turns great fighters like Diaz and Marquez into mere opponents to make a bigger, younger Khan look good.

Marquez’s management has already rejected the idea of fighting Khan in the past, but it looks like their mutual promoter, Golden Boy Promotions, badly want to pair Marquez up against Khan for some reason. They likely want to make Khan more credible by having him beat a star like Marquez in order to turn Khan into a mega star that much quicker.

Marquez will be nearly 37 by the time he fights Diaz next month and it’s probably not a good idea to put the smaller 5’7” Marquez in with the 5’10” Khan because he would be at a disadvantage due to Khan’s height, reach and superior youth and hand speed. Marquez isn’t a knockout puncher like Marcos Maidana, so he wouldn’t be able to take shots for a couple of rounds and then knock Khan out cold. Instead, he would have to try outbox Khan and that might be hard because of Marquez’s lack of size. Marquez is better off at super featherweight than he is at lightweight and to ask him to move up an even higher weight class than that is putting him at a disadvantage.

Marquez should be able to get by Diaz without too many problems. Diaz is struggling right now and has lost three of his last five fights. He probably should have lost four of his last five bouts because one of his wins was the gift decision over Paulie Malignaggi in their first fight in August 2009.