By Chris Williams: In an effort to keep WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez on board, Golden Boy Promotions is reportedly hoping to see if he’d be interested in facing WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez instead of taking a third fight with Manny Pacquiao according to boxing news from examiner.com. Marquez’s contract with Golden Boy recently ran out.
Golden Boy can match any contract offer that Top Rank makes to Marquez, however. Top Rank offered Marquez $5 million to face Pacquiao after his fight with Shane Mosley next week. Marquez hasn’t said whether or not he’ll take the fight with Pacquiao, but most people think he will. It’s kind of silly for them to think that a fight with Alvarez would be something that could compete with a potential third fight with Pacquiao. It’s kind of a no-brainer that a fight with Pacquiao is the better deal rather than taking on a younger, much bigger and far less popular fighter like Alvarez.
Alvarez is coming off of a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision win over Britain’s Matthew Hatton to capture the vacant WBC junior middleweight title. It was strange that Alvarez was allowed to fight a welterweight like Hatton for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title. It was about as weird as Pacquiao fighting Antonio Margarito for the vacant WBC junior middleweight title last year. At the time of the fight, Pacquiao had never fought at junior middleweight while Margarito had fought only once at that weight class in the past six years. Despite the lack of experience from both of them, they were able to leap frog over other top contenders in the junior middleweight division to fight for the title at a catchweight of 150 pounds rather than the full weight.
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